1936 On the Continent

there, and it can only be visited with permission. If you take a boat round the lake (you can hire a motor-boat in the port of Aix-les-Bains), go right up to the end of the lake, as far as the picturesque village of Chalaz, where a canal begins, linking the lake with the Rhône.
    From Aix-les-Bains you can also go up to Mont Revard, another famous watering-place, situated at a height of over 6,000 feet. There is a wonderful view from there over the whole range of the Alps. A recently constructed Telepheric, amazingly planned and carried out, will take you up there in a few minutes.
    Not far from Aix-les-Bains, as you go up a wide and pleasant valley, stands Chambéry, an important industrial town of 25,000 inhabitants. It is rather a dull place. There is hardly anything of interest there apart from the castle and a peculiar monument flanked by four elephants, offered to his native town in the seventeenth century by a Frenchman who had become Nahab in India.
Chambéry
    The hotels are not up to much in Chambéry. If I were you, I should stay at Aix-les-Bains and have lunch or dinner in Chambéry at the Restaurant du Chapon Fin, Place du Palais de Justice, where you can ask for one of the local specialities, creamed chicken.
    A few miles south of Chambéry opens the fertile and richly cultivated valley of the Isère, the Grésivaudan, where you will probably be surprised to hear there are quite a large number of tobacco plantations. I’ve never smoked the tobacco grown there—as far as I am aware!—and never intend to. But it is an interesting and unexpected fact. On the left there is an immense chain of granite mountains, the Belledonne, with its famous and dangerous peaks, the Megève and the Barre des Ecrins. It would be madness to try to climb them unless you are absolutely sure of yourself, and even then you should take a guide with you. Every year the Megève, the most deadly of the French mountains, claims several victims.
    Before entering the Grésivaudan, if you are fond of wild landscapes and want your nature served to you unadorned and desolate, follow the Isère back up as far as St.-Pierre d’Albigny and the Arc up to St.-Michel. You will be in Maurienne, one of the most curious and isolated parts of Savoie, where the Moors from the Mediterranean came and settled down in the Middle Ages and remained for many centuries. Even now you will find there many absolutely pure Arab and Berber types. The valley, recently industrialised owing to its many waterfalls, terminates in the pass and tunnel of Fréjus and the station of Modane, on the frontier of Italy.
Grenoble
    If the savage beauty of Maurienne does not tempt you, push on straight to Grenoble, the capital of the French Alps and an important industrial and university town. A great many foreign students come there to learn French (so they say!), especially Scandinavians, and they give the town a gay and youthful cosmopolitan atmosphere.
    The Place de Verdun, where the Préfecture and the University are, is a magnificent square well worth seeing.You should also visit the cathedral and, above all, the museum. In the vast halls of this museum you will find a unique collection of modern paintings. Not even in Paris could you find so many famous modern works grouped together in one building.
    The spot to meet for apéritifs in the evening is in one of the cafés of the Place Grenette or the Place St. Louis, where all the principal hotels and restaurants are to be found.
    While you are in Grenoble, it is a good idea to get in a supply of gloves. It is the principal European centre for their manufacture, and the families of the glove-makers form the very reserved aristocrats of the Dauphiné.
    Apart from the Hôtel des Dauphins, in the Place Grenette, there are plenty of good hotels in Grenoble, among which should be mentioned the Hôtel d’Europe and the Grand Hôtel, the former on the Place Grenette and the latter not far away in the Rue de la République.
Environs of Grenoble
    Grenoble owes its reputation not only to its own charm, but also to the numerous excursions of which it is the centre. One of the most interesting of these is to the monastery of the Grande-Chartreuse. You can get there by autocar in a few hours. Or, if you should like to make it into a two or three days’ walk, go up the main road about ten miles and then turn off right into the woods and follow the paths right through to Saint-Pierre. It is a marvellous walk, and well worth the