Thursday Racletting (before Italy!)

I took Victor down the street to see the castle in Saint-Priest before stopping at my bank and hopping on the tram. The tram has definitely become my least favorite way to travel unless I'm going up 2 stops to get to school, but I thought he'd like to experience the sleek and quiet mode of public transport. It always seems so claustrophobic to me now.... and slow compared to the bus or metro. But- anyway, we made our way up to Vieux Lyon. It was a much sunnier day than yesterday, although still chilly. We're hoping the weather channel comes through for us with the upper 50's temps they show for Italy this week.

On our way towards the restaurant, we walked around the back of St. Jean... which I always forget about being something to see. There's an archeological dig with an old stand-alone arch that used to be attached to a building. I read the sign for the first time while Victor took a walk around. The area used to be the site of a baptistery and another cathedral built around the same time as St. Jean (so beginning in the 12th century). It said that the buildings were destroyed and rebuilt a time or two, with the last destruction happening during the French Revolution... We took a few pictures and goggled at an elderly woman feeding a flock of pigeons before moving on to the wooden raclette restaurant (the same one I took Amy to). Instead of raclette, not being quite as big on cheese as I am, Victor actually ordered a grillade... or meat to grill on your own at the table. Our little table for two was quite full of cooking apparatuses.... a hot stone grill for him and a raclette hot plate for my cheese. It was pretty delicious as usual, although Victor thinks he'd rather have to do less work for his food:) Oddly enough, we were the only ones eating at the restaurant... so it didn't take long at all for us to get in and out (once we got our little guy's attention.... no 2 hour lunch for us today sir!).

After lunch, we took a walk through Vieux Lyon and through another traboule. Victor is amazed by these little blasts into the middle ages! They are pretty cool, so I'm glad I've been able to find a few! They are those secret passageways that link buildings/streets/inner courtyards together. These inner courtyards have some beautiful architecture... and of course lots of old wooden doors/cellars for Victor to investigate. After a few more pics, we walked past the cathedral and down towards Bellecour before getting onto the metro. We ran to catch our bus and are now home to rest/pack up before our trip to Italy!

We leave from Lyon at 8:30pm tonight, headed towards Dijon where we switch trains to our overnight sleeper train to Venice. We arrive into Venice around 9am tomorrow morning. Hopefully, after a night on the train, we will have enough energy to tour some of Venice before checking into our hotel in the afternoon (I'd love to see St. Mark's and the Doge's Palace!). We'll stay in Venice one night, getting up to catch our next train to Florence on Saturday morning. We spend one night in Florence, and take our next train to Siena on Sunday afternoon. Monday we have our guided day trip in Tuscany and Tuesday we train back to Florence. We'll have enough time to revisit our favorite spots or do a little last minute shopping in Florence before catching one more overnight train back to Lyon, arriving home Wednesday morning!

I'm not bringing my laptop (just one less thing to carry), but we both have our ipods and chargers. We'll hopefully have wifi in at least one of our hotels, but if not, we'll try to find an internet cafe to check in with you all sometime! We'll take lots and lots of pictures to post when we get back!!!

Reste cool and wish us luck!!!

Lindsay and Victor Hit Lyon!!!!

Bonsoir from France! (Victor's new favorite French word)

Victor and I had a nice easy-going day. I made my first ever real French quiche for lunch.... which turned out pretty good if I do say so myself. We eventually made our way to the bus and metro to go into Lyon. We walked from Bellecour down Rue République to do a little window-shopping and people watching. We took a left at the Opèra to my favorite part of Lyon, Place Terreaux with the horse fountain and Musée des Beaux-Arts sculpture garden. We saw some French police in the gardens, which Victor was very excited about... and somehow I got him to pose along with a Rodin sculpture (pictured above... he thinks he can do better, so we may be going back). We had a quick drink at a café across the street (I had a yummy chocolat viennois and he had a Leffe demi blonde).

We walked across my favorite red suspension bridge over the Saone River towards Vieux Lyon. We stepped inside St. Jean to see the horlage clock and took a walk through a Traboule (secret passageway). Victor has decided he would like to live in something with stone cellars, spiral staircases, and giant wooden doors. I took him to my favorite little crêperie, where we had delicious dessert crêpes (can you tell- today was a day of me showing him my favorite stops....).

We're back home after an eventful metro to bus ride home. There was a belligerent drunk man on the metro who challenged another guy to a duel. On the bus, we had a wholesome group of guys in the back who thought it would be nice to light up and smoke. At least they opened a window :/

Home again home again jiggity jig! On the agenda tomorrow is having raclette and getting ready for our Italy trip!!!!

Reste cool! And keep your tireZ inflatedz. (Tirez in French means to pull, however, every time Victor saw tirez on a door he giggled and said tirezzzz!. In French it is pronounced teeray.)

More Bourg Pics

Trilingual Day in Bourg-en-Bresse (with 2 versions of English)

Today, Lindsey, Hannah, Caroline, and I went to visit Helen who lives in Bourg-en-Bresse. Bourg, as Helen calls it, is about an hour north-east of Lyon by train. Helen lives and teaches in the Bourg area high school, but comes to visit Lyon most weekends. So we thought it would be nice to go and visit her! And for only 11 euros round-trip, it was a perfect little day trip for our long weekend:)

Once we arrived, we started off by going to see her high school (or lycee), which houses students and language assistants. The students are usually only there during the week (as they may live farther out of town), but Helen and the Spanish language assistant reside there full time in dorm rooms. The high school itself is pretty cool because it's old and has a beautiful courtyard with "whomping willow" like trees (Harry Potter reference-fyi). It also has a ton of plaques to commemorate professors and students who were involved in the French Resistance movement during WWII. Cool, non?

Then, we walked around the very cute old town area (with more wood-framed houses and trompe l'oeil paintings...can you tell which is real and which is a painting?) and went to the huge Saturday market. It was such a pleasant experience in comparison to the hussle and bussle of the large markets around Lyon or Paris. This was much less fast pace, even though it still had tons of vendors, and there were lots of stands giving free samples (which of course we tried). After a good 15-20 minutes of walking around the yummy fruits, cheeses, vegetables, meats, nuts, and flowers, we decided it was lunch time.

We went to a darling (well it was) creperie, probably owned by the man and woman serving us. The restaurant was modern on the inside, but also quaint and very clean, with a moderately priced creperie menu. We had some delicious cider and crepes sales (or real food crepes, as opposed to sugar crepes). These are made with a different type of pancake batter and filled with anything from ham and cheese to chicken and potatoes. I just had the regular old ham and cheese crepe, but it was an excellent choice:) Then for desert, I felt like I couldn't possibly continue eating, so Caroline and I split a caramel crepe. It was basically a crepe with a delicious, buttery caramel puddle on top. I kind of wish I had eaten it with a spoon. It was SO good.

And then, we just talked and talked and sat in this quaint little restaurant for 2 hours. It is amazing how long we can go just talking about the differences between American English and British English. I actually learned quite a lot about different phrases they say... for example, in American English we say to rob or bugglarize, the British say to burgle. In America, we go to the bathroom to pee, in England, they go to the loo to have a wee. In America we have fanny-packs, in England, they have bum-packs (and their fanny is not the same fanny!). In England, to say someone is speaking with a "posh" accent means that they are speaking proper English (and it isn't usually meant in a good way... as in they are Snooty and speak the Queen's English). In American English, you might hear someone say they had a wicked awesome night (well at least maybe my friends up in New England say this) or an amazing time. In British English, you might hear, "I had a dead (or right) proper night." The list goes on and on and that's why we sat and talked for 2 hours... it was a dead hilarious time ;)

We eventually left in search for the main attraction in Bourg- the 16th century monastery. On our way, we met up with the Spanish language assistant, and Helen's friend, Racine (I think that's how it's spelled) who is from Mexico. She obviously speaks Spanish and French, but not so much English (although she seemed to understand a good bit). So we mostly spoke in French from then on out (and I attempted to recall the very little Spanish I once knew... which was super hard to do with French in my head). Anyway, the monastery has a beautiful patterned roof (similar to the ones I saw in Dijon) and more wood framed work in the courtyard of the monastery. There were several modern and classical art exhibits up in the Church and the monastery (we enjoyed interpreting the modern art especially).

On our way back, we had a quick look at the Cathedral Notre-Dame in Bourg, continued comparing languages (now Spain-Spanish to Hispanic-Spanish, French, American English-British English), stopped for a quick drink (I had mango juice, yumz) and got back on the train. Our brains certainly got a work out today!

Enjoy the pictures:)

Reste cool!

The Tours Tour

These are pictures from when Lindsey and I toured, Tours, France... hehe. The hotel we stayed in was in Tours, but we did most of our touring out and around the Loire valley in the castles. We did get to walk around the town of Tours more on our last night and last morning there before taking trains different places (home for Lindsey, Paris for me). In these pictures you see the huge cathedral (shown in a previous picture at night time), cute wood-framed houses, an arched bridge with flags crossing the Loire River, another really old Cathedral, a pair of 300 euro shoes with balls we saw while window shopping on Sunday morning (I thought they'd be nice for Christmas), and the Hotel de Ville all lit up at night. And there you have it!

Back to Paris, in Pictures

To begin our day in Paris, we stopped at our first hostel (le village) in Montmartre. This quarter of the city is located in the north, in the 18th arrondissement (or district). We had an amazing view of the beautiful Sacre Coeur (or Sacred Heart Basilica) from our 5th story window. We had a nice lunch looking up at the church, each having a yummy French delight (croque monsieur, nutella crepe, and panini). This area is famous for its large artist community (Picasso lived and painted here) and continues to have a little square of artists painting and selling their work.

Next we traveled by metro to the Arc de Triomphe, situated at the top of the Champs Elysees. The arch was commissioned by Napoleon after the victory at Austerlitz in 1806. The arch honors those who fought in the French Revolution and in the Napoleonic Wars, with the names of French victories and generals inscribed on the surface. The arch is the centerpiece of a rather daunting traffic circle with exits shooting out on all sides like a star. To get underneath the arch, one must go through the underground tunnel. It doesn't cost anything to walk around under the arch, but does cost to go up to the top. The Champs Elysees is a very swanky avenue that extends from the arch to the Place de la Concorde. We walked all the way down, passing such stores as Louis Vuitton, Swavorski, and Cartier. There is also a huge McDonald's, which is where we took a pit stop to go potty!

At the center of Place de la Concorde is the Obelisque de Louxor, or the Luxor Obelisk. The Egyptian obelisk was "given" to the French, and later placed where a famous guillotine used to be located during the French Revolution. (During the Revolution, this place was renamed Place de la Revolution. Marie Antoinette was guillotined here in front of cheering crowds.) The obelisk is decorated with hieroglyphics and a detailed drawing of how the obelisk was transferred to France in 1833. At the Place de la Concorde, you can see the Champs Elysees, the Arc de Triomphe, the Eiffel Tower, and the Jardins des Tuileries which extends off to the other side of the obelisk.

We walked through the Tuileries Gardens and took a little break/nap at one of the large fountains. The gardens were originally created by none other than Catherine de Medicis in 1559 after the death of Henri II (her husband). After the French Revolution, the gardens became a public park, and has continued to be a meeting place for Parisians and tourists alike. The gardens play host to many out door art exhibits and statues. This time around, there was a tree located in one of the fountains and an American Flag depicted on ladders.

Walking from the Place de la Concorde and through the Tuileries Gardens, you eventually lead up to the Louvre. The Louvre is a gigantic building. It was originally built as a fortress in the 12th century, but was frequently altered throughout the Middle Ages. Francois I acquired the Mona Lisa, one of the focal points of the museum, and over time the palace went from fortress to royal residence, to private museum, to public museum after the French Revolution. The glass pyramid and inverted pyramid were completed in the late 80's, early 1990's. We didn't visit the museum this time around, but did go downstairs to the Carousel du Louvre, small underground mall with the inverted pyramid (you don't have to wait in line to see this or pay money!).

From here we walked down the Seine to the ile de la cite, or the island of the city to find the Notre Dame Cathedral. The cathedral was built between 1160 and 1345 and is one of the best examples of the French Gothic styles of architecture. The cathedral really is something to see- huge, beautiful towers, amazing gargoyle and saints decorating the surfaces, the flying buttresses, and the gorgeous stain glass windows. The church has a fascinating history, which I won't go into now... but although it may be touristy, it is a "Paris must-see."

Zee Beautiful Annecy (On-cee)

This morning we left the apartment around 9:30am to get to Annecy for lunch (when they were still serving sit-down lunch this time, hehe). The drive was beautiful.... going from hills, to mountains, to really big mountains, to really, really big mountains with snow covered caps. We found the office of tourism straight away and got a map and a few brochures on what to do in Annecy. We asked where to find a free parking lot (which we found and used!). We also asked for a restaurant recommendation... which turned out to be wonderful.

We were a little skeptical at first, especially because Maggie was unsure if she could find anything vegetarian friendly. But in the end, we were all very happy and full:) Thomas and Heather had the plat du jour or plate of the day (lamb chops and lasagna), Maggie had a very hearty salad with carrots and green beans, and I had.... dun dun dun, more cheese. Yes, I got the raclette... which interestingly enough, ended up not being the same contraption as the one I used at Laurence's house. The thing they brought out for me was a clip for a half wheel of cheese and a heater. Once the top of the cheese got hot, I lifted the contraption to scrape boiling hot cheese onto my potatoes. It was so yummy. We also sampled the house wine and the kir for an aperitif, also delicious. We left warm and ready for our self-guided walking tour.

After rolling me outside, (hehe), we went over to the lovers bridge or pont des amours. The town is similar to Chambery (in the same Savoie region, where raclette and fondue is famous), but unlike Chambery, it is full of beautiful canals, has a beautiful lake, and is very much in the French Alps. The lovers bridge is over a canal connected to the lake, so it has an amazing view. And we could't have come at a better time. The leaves are all bright orange and yellow, the weather is in the upper 50's/low 60's, and the sky was bright blue today, no clouds.

We then followed our walking tour guide brochure to see some of the main sights. We saw the beautiful Sales mansion, of the Sales family built in the 17th century. We walked through several old churches, one dating back to the 15th century (Saint Maurice). Inside the church it looks like it's caving in... but I think it's just the architecture that makes it seem that way. It also had a small trompe l'oeil painting in the back, making it seem like there was an extra room... with a creepy grave in it. We walked over canals, one passing right by the Palais de l'ile (or island palace), which was actually an old prison dating back to the 1200's. Heather and I toured the prison.... it was kinda creepy though... prison cells with bars on the windows and things scratched into the cell walls, but it had a cool inner courtyard with a tree.

And since the lake was so beautiful with the sun setting, we took a boat tour, showing amazing views of the Alps and the little Alpine villages (actually Maggie and Thomas opted for taking a walk around part of the lake in lieu of the boat tour, but they saw similar views). Anywho, when I become rich and famous, I shall buy my summer/winter ski cottage here.

We walked a round a little more and found our way to our car. I drove home (which was weird because I haven't driven in over a month now!) and we actually stopped at a McDonald's drive through of all things. But it was another experience I've yet to have... ordering in French at a drive through, check!

Tomorrow, leisurely trip to Lyon. Hope you enjoy these pictures as much as I do! This is one gorgeous place!

Reste cool:)

OFII Appointment and Lyon with Friends!

After a very long day yesterday, and the day before, and the day before that, and the day before that, I was very happy to sleep in my own bed last night (well, the one I have in France), and get real sleep. But of course, because I was nervous about my immigration appointment (doctor's appointment included in order to be signed off that I'm healthy enough to stay here), I got up a little tooo early... so I'm welcoming sleep again:)

Anyway, we got up and out of the apartment by 11am so I could show off the Saint-Priest castle, take the tram into Lyon, and point Maggie, Thomas, and Heather in the direction of the office of Tourism. I got to my appointment.... about an hour early, hoping I'd be able to scoot in a little early, but of course they were closed for lunch from 12-1:30. Why didn't I guess they'd be off for their long lunch break???

I went to grab a bite to eat (mozzarella panini), and waited in line with 50 other people who must have also been given a 1:30 appointment time (well, 13h30). Miraculously, and with the help of another English assistant, we went straight upstairs (as opposed to meeting the receptionist) and were first in line. I was in and out in under an hour! On the downside, although I was given my OFII stamp (office of Immigration and Integration), they notified me that I'd need to renew my visa and stamp come January as my visa extends only until Jan. 2011. I just assumed that was something everyone had to do, but after asking Lindsey about her visa, of course she tells me hers extends until Sept. 2011. So now I'm all freaked out that the French consulate in DC screwed up my visa and put the wrong dates on it.... and I stupidly just went along with it without checking before I left! Oh well, tant pis.... for now.

I found mes amis at the office of tourism and helped them find a place to eat. Then we were off on a grand tour of Lyon (my father, the tour guide extraordinaire, would have been proud!). I showed them Saint-Nizier (the cathedral built throughout the 14th-16th centuries), Place des Terraux and my favorite horse fountain, Hotel de Ville, the Soane river bridges with views of Croix-Rousse, crossed over to Vieux Lyon to see St. Jean (which unfortunately is all covered up by scaffolding at the moment, but we did go inside), up the funiculaire to Fourviere hill, went inside the Basilica, came back down the funicular, onto the metro, to the tram, and to a grocery store to buy a few things for our French feast (well... sort of... wine, cheese, and baguettes were involved).

Tomorrow, the plan is to get up earlish to go to Annecy (near Chambery in the Alps). I'm very excited. This place looks beautiful! Like Chambery, but with a lake! Then, Friday, we are touring Lyon some more, and Saturday we're back up to Paris! Busy, busy, busy!!!

Here are a few pictures from our day. The weather has been very pleasant, as you can tell! Upper 50's and SUNSHINE! I still haven't posted pictures from Paris, so I guess I'll just have to do one long post when I get back on Sunday night from both days in Paris:)

Reste cool:)