Hi there. My name’s Juliette, I’m 20 and as you’re most likely aware, like many others I’m currently preparing for my Erasmus year abroad. I’ve just finished my 2^nd year of an MA in French so come September I’ll be spending my entire year abroad in France at the Grenoble Stendhal University in, you’ve guessed it, Grenoble. As someone who’s spent most of their life living in Edinburgh this is a slightly daunting process, though of course an exciting one as well. The part I’m most nervous about is that I’ve never actually been to Grenoble before, although I did spend a good part of last year driving around the Rhone-Alpes département and discovered I loved the area so figured why not? Part of me also reasoned that if I’m going to do this I might as well take the chance to go somewhere I’ve never been before which unfortunately ruled out most of the major cities in France.

So there you go. In a little over two weeks I’ll be driving (yes, unfortunately) the 1040 (give or take a few) miles from Edinburgh to Grenoble, including a lovely wee ferry ride and most likely many stops along the way to visit family in France. Currently I’m in the slightly worrying position of having nowhere to stay once I actually arrive there but hey y’know, minor details, it’ll all be ok in the end. For those of you who don’t actually know where Grenoble is, as I seem to get asked this a lot, it’s in a valley amongst the Alps near Switzerland and Italy and looks a bit like this:

What with it being right next to the Alps I’m pretty excited to get some skiing practice, some decent rock climbing and hopefully have a go at paragliding. And if I can get my paws on a cheap mountain bike I hear there’s some pretty good cycle routes too, though I’m not sure how sensible that really is considering I’ll be there during the winter mostly and, well it snows a fair amount from what I understand! Obviously as well as all this I’ll be studying at university and possibly have a part time job so I’m expecting to be pretty damn busy!

I’m kind of expecting this blog to mostly be me rambling about life in France, which I’ll apologise for in advance because I do tend to go on a bit as I’m sure you’ve already noticed! But hopefully it’ll be informative rambling and possibly even slightly interesting and helpful to people going abroad next year. I’ll also end up taking lots and lots of photo which I’ll no doubt bombard you with, and I’d like to try as many new things as possible while I’m over there and find out the best places to go and things to do in Grenoble. 🙂