Thursday, December 13, 2007

Hello,

I can’t believe it, but I’ll be leaving France (for the holidays) in just 1 week! I’ll be returning to England for 2 days, before I return to Canada on Dec 22nd, unbelievable that I’ll have been here from almost 2 months.

I had an awesome time last weekend, I decided to go and tour a bit of France instead of staying in Grenoble, or going skiing again. We decided to go to Lyon. It is France’s 2nd largest metropolitan city (1.8 million) after Paris, located in the Rhône-Alps region – the same region as Grenoble. It was approximately 1.5 hrs away by train and the return cost €18.00 with a French student rail card (which I have). And also last weekend was La Fête des Lumières (the Festival of Lights)!

I’ll tell you that I was absolutely shocked upon arriving in the city centre of Presqu-Île. I was expecting Lyon to be an industrial city with a small city centre and many suburbs (like Birmingham of England – a sister city, but nothing in comparison to Lyon). It is more similar to Montreal, I think. Anyway – Instead, I found an absolutely stunning city, rich in history and French culture – I would recommend it to anybody traveling to France.

We started our walking tour by heading through Presqu-Île the city centre located between the rivers Rhône and Saône which bend together in the city – kinda like the Ottawa where the Ottawa and Rideau rivers bend together, but in Lyon the come much closer together and then converge in the south of the city (no canal needed). Presqu-Île is the newer city so that’s where you find the many shops, restaurants, opera, and Hôtel de Ville (city hall). We toured it a bit and then headed into the Old Town (Vieux Ville) – known as Fourvière, ‘the hill that prays.’ This part has your touristy Old Restaurants and La Rue de Boeuf. Lyon was always known in the past for it’s beef and porc cuisine (Gastronomy – the French word). But there are two more important things Lyon was famous for.

Lyon is most famous for being the silk capital of the world. It was sort of where the silk trade for Europe was centered. This led to it being the birthplace of film when the first film was made in Lyon by the Lumière brothers who filmed ‘The workers leaving the Silk Factory.’ However I didn’t really do much cinema or silk related things except looking at silk in shop windows.

We continued through the Old Town and headed up the massive hill (the hill that prays) which has Basilica of Notre-Dame de Fourvière a catholic church and la tour metallique de Fourvière – a mini Eiffel town and secular monument. Upon our trek up to the Basilica we came upon the some of the ruins of the roman city Lugdunum. What we saw were two amphitheatres which now look over the enormous city of Lyon. It was pretty cool and you were allowed to climb all over the seats and the stage where they apparently still to acts in the summer months.

Upon our return to Presqu-Île, it was about 5:00pm and getting very cold. We headed into a pub for a coffee/beer and rest. This was because La Fête des Lumières was set to commence at 6:30pm.

The lights were absolutely amazing, and made the trip even more worthwhile. We started at La Place Bellcourt – where they had the statue of King Louis IV surrounded by an inflatable clear ball containing fake snow, lit up of course. A giant life-sized snow globe. The problem was that I had to pee, and with pretty much the whole city of Lyon at the festival, we had to cross back over the rhône to find me a place to pee (everything was shut in Presqu-Île).

This turned out to be fortunate, because in doing this we found 2 more lights spectacles. One was at La Prefecture (French-government building) which had a video of sort of the development of the world since the Big Bang. It had music too – showing the arrival of life, people, technology, venture into outer space, etc. Then, on our way back into Presqu-Île we saw a lights spectacle on the side of La Rhône between 2 bridges. It was simply many lit-up boxes that changes colour. But it looked really cool and you were allowed to walk up to the boxes and sit on them, etc.

Sadly, at this point, it started to rain, and in cold weather it’s not fun – but we continued on, enjoying the many lights spectacles, the cotton candy, kebabs and vin chaud.

We headed back for our 10:40pm train back to Grenoble, which ended up in us getting lost and missing our train by 2 minutes. We were relieved to find that a bus was departing at 11:20 – but this was exacerbated by the first train leaving with only half of the people. Basically, someone got aggravated and when the police got involved anyone who wasn’t already on the train was not permitted to enter. The problem was that when the person was removed, the train just left without letting everyone on. This left 1 bus for the amount of people that would fit 5 busses.

So, of course, when we arrived the 1 bus was full, and there was no back up plan set in motion for all these people wishing to return to Grenoble. After waiting another 2 hours, and thinking that we’d be spending the night in the Gare de Lyon, they found a train, engineer and mechanic and we were off to Grenoble, arriving at 3 am, instead of our expected 12 am arrival!

All in all it was a great day – and I definitely hope to return to Lyon some day.

I did forget to mention Traboules. This is something unique to Lyon. From the street they appear normal doorways – like an entrance to an apartment or house. But instead it leads into a hallway that comes out into a tiny courtyard between buildings. These traboules even have staircases reaching every floor of the building. They were constructed mostly for transporting silk, but were used by La Resistance during WW2.

This week I had the opportunity to attend Orthopaedic surgery. It was really cool. I’ve seen implants, arthroplasties, osteotomies, and a hip replacement. I was even allowed to scrub in an help out – not much though, you know hold things for the doctor, but it’s cool to get up nice and close and ask questions.

Also been to watch the soccer game between Marseille and Liverpool – which seemed weird because in England the games always start around 8pm, but as we’re an hour later time zone, it started a 9. Also, went to the Grenoble Christmas market yesterday. It’s in the city centre, and you can try French foods like Tartiflette (like scalloped potatoes), vin chaud, roasted chestnuts, crêpes, etc. I was also hoping to find French presents, but the booths mostly display things from around the world (except for the food/candy/wine – which is difficult to bring back to Canada). One guy even tried to sell me one of those neck warmers that also goes over your head. He said they were all made in Canada and great for all winter activities. I had to repetitively tell him that my parents had given me one for Christmas years ago, and that it was sitting with all my ski stuff in Canada! He still wanted me to buy one for France, but I resisted.

Well – can’t wait to get home for the holidays – but a bit more of France to see, and a bit more of skiing to do before I go home!

-Peter

Me in the roman amphitheatre

Me on a staircase in one of the Traboules

Setting up one of the Light Shows for the festival

Jamil, Michael and Me with the Basilica lit up in the background during the festival