Day 9 - Barcelonnette Full Day #2

Another amazing day in the French Alps. We had two things on the agenda for the day - local market in the morning, mountain hike in the afternoon.

The market was bustling when we got down there.  We had to park five or six blocks away.  The booths were all impressive, with tonnes of local produce, cheese, meats, baking, and other products.  We took our time checking out all the kiosques, making a few purchases as we went.  After about an hour we had made our way through the whole market, and decided to head back up to the chalet.

Approach To The Market

Olive Vendor

Cheese Vendor

After fuelling up for our hike French style (baguette, salami, cheeses, olives, pickles, etc.), we headed for our afternoon hike across the valley on the side of the mountain facing us.  Getting there was half the adventure - we drove through a few dozen hairpins, with very few if any shoulder barriers, on a road wide enough for 1.25 cars, from the valley bottom at 1,170 m elevation all the way up to 1,525 m where we parked and started hiking. 😱 Once again we had views within the first few hundred meters. The clear, sunny skies, and the cool fall temperatures would make for near perfect hiking.  The ascent trail was mostly gravel road, and the descent trail was beautiful, soft larch needle single track.

Larch In A Meadow

Les Trois En Arrière

Mandy Leading The Way

View Across Towards Our Chalet

Meadow Selfie

Pano Shot - Pra Loup And Super Sauze Ski Resorts

We had some more fun practicing our French swears (discretely of course), as well as a new sentence I taught the gang.  Le ver vert va vers le verre vert - The green worm moves toward the green glass. 🤣 Again we had lots of laughs and the time flew by.  After about two hours we made it back to the car and headed back to the chalet for some more R&R (Hallmark Christmas movie… 🤪)

Evening Sun From Our Kitchen Window

Not much else to report for today.  Our plan for tomorrow, our last full day here, is to get one more hike in in the morning, and then head to Italy (only about 40 km away) for an afternoon lunch.

C’est tout pour maintenant.  Bonne nuit et à demain, tout le monde!!