Grenoble is famous for street art thanks to its annual Street Art Fest Grenoble-Alpes, launched in 2015, which has transformed the city and surrounding villages into an open-air museum with more than 450 murals, stencils, and art installations dotting the city streets. I absolutely love this style of guerrilla art, and my eyes feasted on it whenever we walked about town.
But the weird thing about visiting Grenoble in the first few weeks of August? It's basically a ghost town. Similar to Caen in emptiness, most of the shops were closed for two weeks (opening up on the following Monday when we left on Saturday) and, due to its heavy student population who are not in session yet, streets and shops outside of the city core remained desolate. Nevertheless, we explored this new city as well as we could!
The Bubbles & The Bastille
Our first adventure was to head to the Téléphérique Grenoble, affectionately nicknamed “Les Bulles” (“The Bubbles”). Celebrating its 90th anniversary last year, this cable car was built in 1934 to link the city centre with the Bastille fortress, a 19th-century stronghold perched above Grenoble.
It was really affordable and a fun way to access the Bastille for its breathtaking views of the city and surrounding mountain ranges.
AcroBastille
While Jill opted to hike higher past the Bastille, I decided I wanted to test my nerves on an open-air high ropes course that went through the remnants of the Bastille. This was Acrobastille. It had five trails (ranging in difficulty from green, blue, purple, red, and black with four zip lines). Ladder bridges, a fun swing, ropes to traverse, and simple rock climbing areas with ladders... it was A LOT of fun. However, being under direct sun in the heatwave and my lack of upper body strength eventually took its toll and I didn't attempt the two hardest runs. Regardless, this is MY kind of adrenaline. :)
Heatwave continues...
Speaking of heatwave, man... France is definitely in the throes of it! It literally started the day before I met up with Jill in Annecy and we haven't caught a break in the heat! Our AirBnB had a portable AC which only cooled the bedroom, not the sofa bed living room, so we opted for a sleepover style with the couch mattress on the floor. It actually worked out perfectly. We even had a really cool dry storm one night with heat lightning, but alas no rain to cool things down.
Solo Adventure Day: Musée dauphinois
Jill and I decided to do a solo day of exploring our own interests. She loves hiking and took on a challenge of a longer day hike while I love museums and exploring cities, so I chose that avenue.
After exploring the mostly empty city, I went to a mostly empty museum! Musée dauphinois was an eclectic mix of art installations, special exhibits, and alpine history. It lays perched about halfway up the hill to the Bastille (no bubble gondola for me this time!) with a great view of the city.
Expecting mostly to learn about the history of living on the Alps, I was surprised to find the first exhibit I came across was about the African community of the Bassari. The Bassari live in southeast Senegal (and partly northern Guinea) and are recognised by UNESCO for its exceptional cultural landscape. The exhibit highlights the cultural practices of five ethnic groups that live there, with sensitivity and collaboration (e.g. involved Bassari communities in selecting objects & texts that would be displayed).
They also had some artistic reflections on Africa, environment, and globalisation at the end of the exhibit. I was particularly drawn to an artist's creation of a Bassari mask out of tyres that reflected "the intensification of transport and its environmental and social consequences as well as the commoditisation and exploitation of people and nature" by the artist collective Culture Ailleurs.
After that exhibit, I came to one highlighting Alpine life from Neolithic to Roman to modern life in the Alps. I saw some coins discovered in the Alps that predated the Roman conquest by 20 years, indicating how trade was developing long before Rome took over. I saw a portable wooden shepherd's hut that the Alpine shepherds would sleep in while they followed their flocks. I saw artefacts indicating how people lived, ate, learned, and survived up there. I also saw some more cowbells.
There was another section on the 1968 Winter Olympics that was held in Grenoble. Fun fact: the first ever official "Olympic mascot" was created and marketed in these Olympics. Its name was Schuss. It was a little abstract skier with a red ball head, long blue body, with skis shooting forward in a “schuss” position (French skiing term for straight downhill).
The unique thing about this museum was that I saw like nine people total in the whole museum, two of which were security guards. It lent itself nicely to visiting the completly empty art exhibits that dotted the grounds like this textile one from Kaarina Kaikkonen called "I would love to Blossom" which was located in the gorgeous former chapel in the museum.
Musée de Grenoble
After a quick pitstop for happy hour cocktails and crepes (is this my love language?), I headed towards another free museum. But this time, the focus was on art. Musée de Grenoble houses both Renaissance/classical art as well as a larger modern art collection. While overall I'm not a huge fan of Renaissance art, I did find a few that I enjoyed.
This museum also had an interesting strategy of intermixing a modern artist, Guillaume Bresson's paintings in with those antiquated ones.
I do love a mid-20th-century art piece, and I was not disappointed by this collection! Here were some of my favs:
After our separate adventures, Jill and I finally reunited. Her mountain photos are incredible! We enjoyed a final evening drink at Bar Cent Un before we head to our next destination: Lyon!
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