Eduard and I love discovering new villages around Grenoble during weekends. Two years ago we discovered Saint-Antoine-l’Abbaye for the first time and it became one of our favourites in the Isere area. Last weekend we drove up to Saint-Antoine again to visit a huge gardeners market.

It also created a valid opportunity for me to write a short post about the village, as I didn’t do that two years ago. Images in this post are therefore shot on both days, two years apart and in slightly different seasons, don’t be confused by the slightly different look of the same trees.

Discovering France

You will see more pictures, that I have not posted before, in the upcoming weeks. I’m pulling pictures from my old travel archives, as I’m trying to fill up this new travel category on my blog that will hopefully guide more people around the area. Many dots will pop up on that map in a few weeks.

 

Saint-Antoine-l’Abbaye

The abbey of is the main attraction of the village and is situated in the centre of the village on a light slope. It’s there where you can find the best spot of the village in between the linden trees. On both sides of the trees, you find little shops, restaurants, artisans and a museum. At the end of that short road you can find the church. Both the church as the surrounding yard have a really nice atmosphere as you can see on the pictures.

When visiting, I would therefore definitely recommend you to visit the church and the abbey. Next to that I would advise a walk in between all the beautiful houses around the abbey.

We have also visited the museum and garden of the abbey and that wasn’t extremely impressive. If you do wish to take advantage of the free access to the museum, the most interesting part is definitely the part of the museum that tells the history of the abbey. It’s there, that you find out that the abbey used to function as a local hospital. And due to that many medical objects from the middle ages can be found in the exhibition.

Do consider that opening times of the museum are typically french. During lunch time everything is closed, also some of the shops at the entrance of the abbey actually.

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If you do end up in the village during lunch time – like we regularly do – don’t worry, there is enough to see by just walking around. The tiny streets give access to small houses, where you can peek into peoples gardens. The sun also always seems to shine here and the inhabitants really seem to care about their gardens and about the way their houses look. That’s not always the case in every village in France, and that’s what makes this village so pleasant to visit. If you are in the neighbourhood, you really should take a stop here.

Owh, before I forget, the local bakery is also very good. It offers these mighty tasty meringue cakes with almonds and walnuts. They never seem to disappoint me, where other bakeries regularly do. Next to that, we also always drive home from Saint-Antoine-l’Abbaye with at least one honey related product. The area produces great honey and they make all kinds of products from it. Varying from soap, to wine, to sweets and this time we also brought home a few bags with flowers for our garden from the flower market.

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