pat and phil's scrapbook: The alps

Oh I've not been very good at keeping this up to date. Never mind, well we've been to the Alps now on the cheap! Colleague from work owns a flat in a place called Briancon near the Italian border but in France. He let us have the place for a week for a reasonable rate (its only available to friends). Then we had some airmiles we had collected over the years via Tesco points etc and had enough for two return flights to Turin - which was the closet airport to Briancon!
So we had a great time- took a while to get used to the altitude - or maybe we were just unfit - but we did some fabulous walks through some alpine meadows - took a cable car to a Glacier -where there was a cafe where you could sit to admire the views - did a huge 3 hour walk up a mountain to admire views over Briancon - drove to small villages - visited a lake - ate a lot and drank reasonable amounts!
Very happy with my newest bit of technology the Tom Tom Sat Nav we called Jane (after the default voice)! She guided us very successfully from Turin airport via some windy mountain roads to Briancon where we were staying - although occasionally she appeared to think we'd driven off the edge of the mountain.
briancon itself has a medieval part called the Cite Vauban and that's where we stayed right on the main street - couldn't have been better placed so plenty of restaurants to stagger to each night.
All the photos are up on Flickr now but here's some of the highlights...