The reason we had to dash-away-Cinderella-style at the stike of 10 was to get down to the big park in Uriage for le pièce de résistance of the evening…Fireworks. They were supposed to start at 10, and we started our rapid decent down the mountain at about 9:59, so we were starting to get nervous about how much of it we would see. We got a few hairpin turns below the Chateau that lies between the village of St Martin d”Uriage and Uriage itself and were met with blinding flashes of blue that lit up the entire canopy of trees that surround the road. There was a small Peugeot hatch-back (pretty standard issue police cruiser) with a metal fence blocking the road. No one could go down as the fireworks were about to begin - and they were setting them off just off of that road down in the park. So we did what anyone would - we pulled off to the side of the road where there was just enough room between the highway and the cliff down the other side (don’t worry - everyone got out on the drivers side… safety first. Well OK, fireworks first - but safety is a solid top 10)
Then we started hearing the explosions - we grabbed the kids by the hands and started running down the road. The nice thing was that since it was already blocked off - we had
The sound of the fireworks, and just being able to see them over the massive trees that stood between where we were and where the exposions were kept everyone sprinting for quite some time. As the road is a series of hair-pin turns, every turn you pass - you would realize that there seems to be yet one more between you and the park.
Finally we turned and were standing at the base of the mountain, facing the park, and stopped a few metres from the safety ribbon that had been strung around the park. On the other side of the park, where there was a huge crowd of people, they were probably a good 100-200 m from where they were being set off. Us…well lets just say the fireworks that sent projectiles back down, were causing us to be a little nervous about our choice of seating. It was a pretty impressive display. They were very low fireworks, so they lit up the massive trees that surround the stately park in Uriage, and the sounds echoed off the mountains on both sides of the narrow valley that holds the town in the mountains up from Grenoble towards the Chamrousse ski station (known for the ‘68 Winter Olympics)
By the time it was done - so were the kids. Loaded everyone back in the cars, and started back up the mountain. I couldn’t help but notice that Le Bal seemed a little lacking when we drove through the village. Briefly thought about stopping…
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