vinc_bilb's VirtualTourist Home Page

My photo from last trip in Paris, with the Eiffel tower as a hat.

A hughe variety of landscapes, traditions, monuments galore, constrats, making it one of the most popular tourist destination in the world.
France offers mountain ranges, coastlines such as in Brittany or along the Mediterranean Sea, cities with a rich cultural heritage, châteaux (castles) and ... vineyards.
In the eastern parts of France, where I'm living, there are skiing resorts in the Alps. Top notable French citiy is... Paris, for sure. France's Mediterranean beaches are also famous.
I'm living in the Rhone-Alpes area, an area with a lot of faces and landscapes. The region has the greatest skiable field in the world and a lot of well known and beautiful sites (the throats of Ardeche, the lake of Annecy, Sea of Ice...) and good gastronomy.

My home is in a small village, 35 kms north from Grenoble (winter olympic games in 1968), in the "Alpes" mountains.

French peoples (not the true, just my opinion) ? Could be surprizing, even for frenchs: we could be excellent when bad is expected and ... the opposite is also right. Some time grumbler, pessimistic but also kind, surprising, efficients. Some good industrial performances, products, but poor buiseness fighting spirit and too much "management by network".
Difficult to realize we're no more a "grande puissance" but only a medium (the Napoleon complex ??).

Married, 3 children's, french, working in Micro-electronics in Grenoble.
My origins are from South of France (Toulon - Provence) and from Savoie (closed from Switzerland).
Some business work and travels in Malaysia, USA, Finland, Korea.

I had also the chance to visit two wonderful countries few years ago: Bali and Mexico. It was a dream

For her 16th years old birthday, Lauriane (No 2) had the good idea to try the big jump, in Ponsonnas (Alps), by falling from a high bridge (110 meters). Hard time for the parents !
I'm wondering who was crying the more.

Music (jazz, classic, rnb) with a dedicated enthusiasm to Ray Charles, Johny Clegg (the white zulu), the Santana brothers, Debussy, Mozart...

I'm used also allow my mind to travel through the books. My preferred could be the "lord of the rings" (J.Tolkien) and "the prophet" (K.Gibran) but I appreciate several kinds of types.

A specific comments for race cars: it was my dream and I'm really a "fan" of Sebastien Loeb, 4 times WRC champion. The two bad brothers fight between Alain Prost and Ayrton Senna in Formula 1 was a fantastic period, 20 years ago now, with a bad end.
Photo credit: http://www.sebastienloeb.com/

See also my Grenoble travel page.
Photo from http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2b/Grenoble_pan.jpg

Grenoble town is not so interesting from tourism point of view, interest is more on the geographical situation: the "Alp's" gate.
Grenoble is also well known for :
- Students (engineering schools, universities)
- Research (European synchrotron, Nano-technologies, micro-electronic)
- High technologies (Hewlet Packard, STMicrolectronics, SOITEC, ...)
A lot of foreigners, students, and multi-cultural influences.
During July and august, Grenoble is often the "hottest city" in France
Yellow point: where I'm working, closed from th big ring (European synchrotron)

Photo: You can see also the longest straight street in Europe (Jean-Jaurès - Libération) and the old city on the left

Some unexpected snow end of march ...

also under the snow ... (first week of april).