Wednesday, August 12, 2015

Post #6 - The Hills are Alive, With the Sound of the Pig of the Alps!


Our day dawned early. We slept late. With Ullrich still in Italy, the rest of us arose with hiking on the agenda, followed by lunch and dinner in Briancon. No bike day! [cyclists, tune in to #7 for the Tour Day, and #8 for the best day on the bike].

First thing:
Hiking - We drove up to the Lautaret (Ticket/Toni/Yeti/SG/JJ and ME), as we had spied some sweet trails the previous day. The hike was really awesome. It involved walking. First, mostly up. Then around the second half of the hike, it became mostly down. Ignore my sarcasm for the moment. It was incredibly beautiful scenery. Plus, we all learned the appropriate way to say "Bon Jour!" as it was offered up to us by every person in every hiking group that we ran across on the way. There were some pretty dangerous dropoffs on the hike. Interestingly, many families were out there with very young kids. Dude, they live on the edge in the Alps. Also interesting to note that there are a lot of places to pee in the Alps.

Some Pics:




















View from the parking lot                                                    ME - Off the Back!

Yeti searches for his cousins



Hiking is fun!

 
Working up an appetite

Stream frequented by locally renowned pig of the Alps

I missed Shangri La, but there was beer...

For ME, after roughly 45 minutes, the thrill of hiking morphs into the chore of walking. So JJ and ME turned tail and hauled it. Apparently there was an incredible mountain stream RIGHT around the corner from where we turned! Dang! We missed it. Consolation prize? See below. Let's call it a draw.

 Local Beer? Galibier, of Course


 The rest of the crew got back a little later, prompting a dangerous lack of drink synchronization (drinksync). This can sometimes result in unintentionally rushed imbibery, which in turns leads to fires, apparently.


 Hey, where's the fire?

After Little Miss Sunshining the Yeti, we hightailed it back to Briancon, where the Ullrichs awaited. I will now fast forward to dinner.

THE FOOT OF THE GARGOYLE
Lest you be put off by the name, let ME assure you that this restaurant was quite good. Slow service, in the most French sense. But the food and atmosphere was good. Meat was grilled on the fireplace, which happened to be right next to our table. How cool is that? Well, not cool at all in the literal sense. Actually, it got pretty freakin' hot. Well at that end of the table. With our German back in the peloton, the night got interesting. Fresh off conquering Italy, our fearless Hun was in full celebration mode.

"Wine for my men and beer for my horses!!"

The combination of the German's healthy intake rate and the glacially-slow service created genuine entertainment. As we pondered our menus (which included google-assisted translation), the German declared his order.

"I will have......THE PIG OF THE ALPS!!!" (I didn't enter enough !! to really capture the moment..)

After repeating POTA for the thirdteenth time, we made it into a sweet drinking game, and soon we were all as schnockered as Kaiser von Ullrichstein. I think the food ended up being pretty good, when it finally arrived. The end of the night was hazy. If you were there, you know what I mean. There was a lot of damage done to the ozone, and I think limoncello was involved...




UP NEXT - - VIVE Le FRANCE!! AMERICANS AT LeTOUR!!!


No comments: