Route Napoleon Part 2 & Back to Paris

Up early for a another long day of driving, we had one of our last continental breakfasts (pastry, yogurt, cereal, OJ, cheese, cold meats) and headed out to explore Sisteron before continuing north.
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The Citadel of Sisteron sits high up on the mountain, overseeing the bridge crossing the river Durance below, as well as defending the flat land both north and south of it. The current castle sits on the site of ruins of several previous fortifications, early Romans as well as French wooden walls have been build over in the 15th & 16th century.

The cathedral at the top was destroyed by an allied bomber in 1945, and sat in ruins until 1980s when it was rebuilt.

And after a LOT of stairs we were back in the car, and finally crossed the bridge in all the photos!

We then continued on our way up the Route Napoleon flying past the side of the Alps - stopping in Gap again for lunch after 2 hours.

Belly full we continued north to Grenoble - our stop for the night 3.5 hours from Sisteron. We stayed in the same Chateau as earlier but this time managed to get in for dinner!

Sadly...no photos were taken but 32 euro each got us a 3 course meal and plenty of awkward semi French / semi English conversation with the hosts.
Next morning we were on the road again - this time heading to our last stop of the holiday - Fontainebleau. Just outside of Paris and 4.5 hours away!

We'd considered a push back to Paris for the final night but decided against rushing back giving ourselves plenty of time on the final day to get the car back and hopefully not miss our train!
Not many photos of this stretch however - we were on the Motorway and we shaved 7 hours of regular roads down to 4 hours (spending 30+ euro) to fly along at 130.

We checked in, dropped our bags, threw out all the spare bottles and receipts which had begun to pile up in the rear footwells (apparently that's where I'd been throwing each parking ticket and toll receipt) and then headed out for an explore.

We'd not actually chosen Fontainebleau specifically for a stop - it was just in the right place, about an hour or so out of Paris with a reasonably priced hotel!

Perhaps we should have brought a drone to get some photos like this!

And with that it was bed time!
Next day was to be our last, hitting barely any traffic we made it to Paris extremely quickly. Besides the typical out of towner trying to drive around a big city issues of one way streets and overlapping roads - we made it to the car hire (at the Gare du Nord station) unscathed!
Goodbye little car! Now off to catch the train!