Good morning, snow boarders and snowmen everywhere, and welcome to the French / Italian Alps! Today the beans find themselves technically still in France, but about 10 yards from the Italian border and the ski resort town of Claviere. If you are so inclined, you too can come up here for a week of slaloms, moguls, or other high-risk snow stunts, or you can do like the beans and spend your day in a nearby hotel enjoying the company of a warm fire, a hot toddy, and the witty stylings of several young Italian snow bunnies. Hey, they may be canned, but they're certainly not dumb... Alas, by the time the beans arrived it was summer, and most of the snow was gone. Oh, sure - there were a few kids still trying to milk out the last of the winter fun by making mud-laced snowmen and having a slush-ball fight, but it's just not quite the same, is it? Still, the beans tried to get into the spirit, and built an igloo for themselves. True, it did look an awful lot like their own metal can, but if you squint a little and use your imagination...

Still, it's hard to be petty about seemingly trivial things such as temperatures and seasons when you have incredible views like this, isn't it? So here we are, high up in the Alps, somewhere between the French towns of Grenoble and Briancon along the scenic N91 highway. BATW Ambassador David says that this is typical of the scenery for much of the length of this road. But while we're impressed by the stellar vantage points, we'd also like to remind you to keep your eyes on the road when driving through these winding mountain roads, okay? It's a loooooong way down... Anyway, you won't be surprised to learn that the frijoles had a great time in the Alps, and hope to come back again soon when there is more snow than slush. Still, it was nice to see these hills without running the risk of running into a Yeti or Abominable Snowman or some creature along those lines. (He must've been on vacation in Antarctica, you suppose?)