Today we decided to be real tourists.  We wanted to see the old Italian section of Grenoble along the river, and the Eglise St. Laurent, which is an old excavated church that has it's roots in the third century as an old Roman church.

The street along the east side of the river is the old narrow type with a lot of great old buildings alongside.  Caroline and Jim posed for this picture.  Notice that Caroline is still on crutches, but not wearing her Frankenstein boot.  Her foot is looking better and her mobility has increased a great deal.

The fountain of the Lion and Serpent is a symbol of the town.  It symbolizes the two rivers that surround the town.  The Drak (Dragon) river and the Isere (Serpent) river.  Somehow the Lion is supposed to symbolize the dragon, but I guess even in the old days some things got lost in translation.

The first shot shows some of the ramparts from the old fortifications.  Grenoble was a hill town that spread across the valley, and then needed to fortify the hillside as military techniques got better over the centuries. 

The picture of Caroline by the window is from inside the church.  I have a real liking for stained glass windows.  But I'm not crazy about churches.  In the case of this church, since it's mostly an archeological dig, I felt pretty safe running around the place.  The other window is the next one down the wall.

This is the main stage.  The sign shows the different sections that were built at various times from the third to the 18^th centuries.  Caroline thought maybe this old church would be like Lourdes and cure her foot.  We convinced her not to toss her crutched into the crypts even though she was feeling so good.

The floor is completely torn up, as you can see in the second photo.  And the spots that look like they are mummy shaped are the old crypts where bodies of people used to be.  Each layer of the church was built upon the last layer, which makes archeologists get all itchy to dig.  Given the long duration of this church site, there is a lot of excited archeologists around.

These are two shots of the same place.  This is the oldest part of the church that is still being used for ceremonies.  The window is a street level window on the downhill side of the church, which accounts for the light.  There are lots of old roman style columns and decorative stonework from the fifth and sixth centuries.

Caroline was still pursuing the cure for her foot, so I tried to capture the moment appropriately.  :-)

These crypts are in another part of the digs, outside the main church area.  The number of crypts is unknown at this time, but the extent of the grounds is pretty well defined.  it will take time for everything to be explored.  This is an active dig site, and you can see the different styles of crypts that are already exposed.  You can also see the different types of construction in the stonework and arches.

The arch in the first photo is typical of the later Roman style.  It has some great stone details in the columns, and the tile work detail shows. 

The second photo gives a better sense of the depths that are being excavated below the floor of the main church.  We were able to walk through all the layers, which are nicely lit.

After we left the church we saw some of the ramparts that are still in place near the old church.  Most of the original wall and gates have been removed as the town expanded. 

And since it was a warm and humid day, we had to recover with some lunch and then some ice cream in one of the nearby parks.