Premièrement le Fleuve Rhône et puis, les Alpes

   The title means "First the Rhone River then the Alps"

   Our hotel room last night in Arles was right on the Rhone River. We had to walk across the river bridge to get to a restaurant to eat dinner. Today our plan was to drive north along the Rhone and to bird the river until we would break off and trend east toward the Alps. We wanted to be sure to avoid the city of Lyon. Lyon is the second largest city in France. It has a lot of traffic and no birds that we are interested in. The picture below is Berry on the bridge across the Rhone in Arles, France.

   France is a very technologically advanced and scientific country. France has been very active in developing nuclear technology.They try to sell reactors and nuclear technology around the world. The country derives about 75% of its electricity from nuclear energy, due to a long-standing policy based on energy security. Some of the political class are afraid that nuclear power plants will be targeted by terrorists. Robert and I could not get close to the one below on the Rhone River. So, we just took a picture below of the towers belching out smoke.

   The Massif Centrale is an elevated region in the middle of France. It consists of mountains and forests. We drove through a portion of this area today. We saw several Jackdaw (Corvus Monedula). This is a black bird with a grey nape and distinctive pale-gray irises. The Jackdaw is one of several birds of the Corvus, or Crow family found all over France.

   We stopped for lunch in Valence, France. Robert noticed that many businesses and restaurants were closed. He asked two different ladies about it. One well-dressed lady eating a sandwich out of a piece of foil, said it was the poor economic situation. The waitress hypothesized that the French people were just didn't like to work.

   We ate at an establishment named "Green'Box", with the apostrophe like that, a salad place in central Valence. We both had very fresh and tasty salads. We spent the rest of the day in the Alps. The mountains are very tall and rocky. Some of them had snow on the tops.

   At the edge of a mountain lake, we saw some Mute Swans (Cygnus Olor) and Robert popped a Eurasian Tree Sparrow (Passer Montanus), the first one of this trip, on top of a hedge.

   When we were finished, we decided to start looking for a hotel for the night. We drove down the autoroute to a city named Aix-Les-Bains and stayed at the Hôtel Des Eaux. The picture below is a castle located in the city of Aix-Les-Bains.

Robert and Berry

Photos courtesy of wikipedia and rfowler