アルプスの山にこもる―花編― Away from it all in the mountains-Alpine flowers-

フランスアルプスの山の中、バルディゼールという街に２週間ほど滞在しました。ここはスキー、スノボ好きなら冬に絶対来たいと思う広大なスキーリゾート（スキーで国境を越えてイタリアにも行けます。。）ですが、夏は花がとてもきれいで、景色も素晴らしいです。
滞在中、天候にも恵まれ、毎日歩きまくりました。既に花の見ごろ（６月後半）は過ぎていたようですが、それでも珍しい多くの花を見ることができました。

We stayed in Val d'Isere in the mountains of the French Alps for a fortnight. It is a huge ski resort to which ski or snow board lovers are eager to go in the winter. To my surprise, they can ski to Italy. As for us in the summer, we enjoyed beautiful flowers and splendid views.
During our stay, luckily, we hiked everyday in nice weather. It was a bit late, -in mid July- for the best time for flowers, which was the latter half of June, nevertheless, we saw many unusual flowers.

特に、エーデルワイス、野生のユリ（マルタゴン）は見れて感動。。。エーデルワイスはドイツ語で「高貴な白」という意味だそうですが、確かにベルベット生地のような感じで高貴な感じがするかも。土産や薬草用に乱獲されて減少し、現在貴重な存在になっているようです。

I was especially happy that I saw two very rare plants in flower, an edelweiss and a wild lily, called lys de martagon. Edelweiss means 'noble white' in German. The flowers` petals had the texture of velvet so that I felt they were really noble. The number of them has decreased because of excessive picking for souvenirs or medical herbs, as a result they are rarely seen.