| Years ago, when I was a systems engineer, we used to do all of our training Grenoble, either in the factory in Eybens or the training headquarters in Meylan. That was in the days when computer systems courses used to last 12 weeks and even operating systems courses like Advanced Unix used to take 5 weeks. I worked out that I've actually spent two and a half years living in the Alpha Hotel on the Rue de Verdun and getting legless in the Pub King Charly.
We used to thrash down the N85 (Route Napoleon) almost every weekend and go down to Monaco, Cannes, Nice, St Tropez, Cassis - wherever the fancy took us, and the fancy usually took us to the place where women wore the least, which was sometimes nothing at all.
We mostly tortured little Renault hire cars to within an inch of their life, but did it quite a few times on a VFR 750 borrowed from an English mate who lived out there on the weekends he had to go and see his in-laws.
Mav is right about the road though. It's awesome. It goes from fairly open, fast sweepers to places where it's like the Cat & Fiddle, only 10 times as long. I was last there 15 years ago, but it sounds as if they haven't improved the barriers at all. In some places, all that's between you and a 50 - 200 foot drop into a gorge is some big 2ft cubes of concrete placed about 8 feet apart. My favourite bit of the road (although one of the places you're most likely to die) is where the road has literally been carved out of a cliff face and there are short bits that are like half a tunnel with the side nearest the gorge below left open. On this stretch there are also churches and villages that seem to just cling to the rockface.
My abiding memory is of being on one of the snaking downhill sections, really going for it on the VFR and having a French biker on a beaten up old Kawasaki Z1000 come past me on the outside. The guy had an open face helmet, was smoking a fag and as he came around the outside on a long right hander, with sparks grinding off the pegs, he turned round in the saddle, put his left arm up and gave me the thumbs up. Mad as a box of frogs!
Incidentally, for anybody doing this and maybe having an overnight in Grenoble, try out a little family run restaurant called La Panse in Rue de la Paix. Not a bit pretentious and the food is superb. Me and Mrs Jools have often done a 100 mile round trip detour from Lyon to get some of their Salmon baked in a sea salt crust or their Tournedos. Gotta go now, I'm salivating too much...  | 
Jools
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