Lyon and the Festival of Lights

I'm so behind.... Here is my last trip from last year. Apparently at some point Mary (Jesus' mother Mary) saved the city of Lyon from the plague, so each year on December 8th they put candles on their windowsills to honor and thank her. This has in recent years grown into a huge light show spectacular that includes the weekend closest to December 8th, when there are light shows in a lot of the squares of Lyon, and many of the major landmarks are included. One of my coworkers is Lyonnaise, so he invited me and a few friends to go stay with his parents and check out the show.

As an aside to the festival of lights story, I love going into people's homes to see how  Europeans live. It's so much fun and an experience you just don't get if you're just touring or don't know people. I have a few family friends who live in France/Belgium that I've gone to visit, so I've gotten to see several different houses and lifestlyes, and this was another totally different one, so I loved that part of it.

Back to the festival. Friday night we got in an headed off to start seeing the lights. As this is a light festival, the photos will do most of the talking...

A horse galloping across the facade of city hall

A picture of a woman tumbling across the building beside city hall

An awful picture of the basilica with a Merci Marie sign beside it

An enormous bunch of brilliantly colored balloons attached to a statue

A picture of Lyon taken from the basilica showing how enormous those balloons are...

  Saturday's daylight hours were spent touring around and seeing Lyon itself, which is a beautiful city spread on the hills and floodplain where two rivers join.

The basilica

Mural! Lyon has several huge murals that are really cool.

 Saturday night, more lights. The first two are from a park where they had a whole bunch of small scenes set up with chicken-wire figures. It was a really cool effect! As seen below, they made some good ones (I love the dragon in the background of the second) and the figures could disappear into the darkness when they weren't lit up and then appear at dramatic times in the stories.

A nice walk along one of the rivers at night

I think that may be the basilica on the other side of the hill, but it looks rather eerie...

 My (and most people's) favorite light piece was a courthouse or something where they had a pinball light show set up, and people were actually playing! I for some reason don't have a picture, but it was awesome. And just to make it better, pinball is called flipper in French. While this was apparently a bad year for the show in general (crisis, budget issues, etc), it was cool to us since it was our first time.  Lyon is a city I could wander around more given another chance and I could definitely go try some of the restaurants, since Lyon is known as the gastronomic capital of France (which says a LOT). But, alas, as I leave France in a month, I don't think I'll get another chance at Lyon before leaving...

Monaco and Nice

It was my birthday recently, and I wanted to travel but couldn't figure out what to do, so when two classmates told me they were going to a jazz concert in Monaco that weekend, I decided to go as well (skipping the expensive and not-my-genre concert). It was awesome! Four of us headed to Monaco Saturday morning and spent the day wandering around the odd little principality on the Mediterranean. I had no idea it was built up the side of a mountain!  You can wander around the streets horizontally, or there are vertical stairways and outdoor public elevators if you want to change altitude. The whole place is covered in the Monaco flag and colors (red and white). I don't know how much of that is leftovers from their royal wedding in June (yup, there was another one this year, although it didn't quite get the same press) and how much it's just always covered in its flag. As someone pointed out, it's so small, the price of covering it in flags is really not a big issue!

We wandered the city-state and headed up to the palace, which is on a huge rock peninsula, right at sunset, which was nice.  Then it was off to the casino to drop off the two who were going to the concert and for me and the other girl to check out some...glamour? It's a bit hard to describe. The casino itself was beautiful--very old and nicely done--but the clientele was not up to par when we were there. In fact, there were nearly no people in all of Monaco. We guessed it's mainly a summer destination, and that it was too early for Christmas, so the winter holiday crowd hadn't shown up yet, leaving....the locals? We did not at all get the expected glamorous impression. In front of the casino, where super-fancy cars are usually parked for show, there was only one Lamborghini. The rest were normal things like BMWs, Mercedes, and even Audis. Nice cars, don't get me wrong, but not what I expected in front of the Monte Carlo Casino! Out of curiosity, one classmate and I paid the 10 euro cover to get into the casino and check it out. It was fun, but there were so few people and such weak people watching we didn't stay long. After the casino we wandered the desserted town for a while and finally found ourselves sitting beside multi-million euro/dollar yachts on the docks, which face back towards the city (which is in a bay). That was my favorite part of Monaco I believe. To end the night we caught the train to Nice to stay in a hotel which was MUCH cheaper than those in Monaco.

The Monte Carlo Casino

Monaco at night from the docks

Sunday we spent playing on the awesome stone beach in Nice, wandering around the market in the old city, climbing to a garden that looked out over the city, and just enjoying ourselves. It was awesome, and I must say, Nice is very nice (don't throw things at me)! Then we had a pretty train ride home along the coast. It was an awesome birthday. Just nice, relaxed traveling, the way it should be!

I can handle this!

Spices in the Nice market

Nice

Munich!

I finally went to Munich! One of the four universities in my program is in Munich, but the research is very specific and not my thing, so I won't get a chance to live there as part of this program. But I've been wanting to go and visit at least. Munich is, however, one of those places that is nearly impossible to reach from Montpellier. Europe in general is well-connected, but not always. So I had been putting off the trip but finally picked a block of a few days and decided I was going, no matter what. My flight options were crazy expensive, whether I tried to go from Montpellier or Paris. And the train? More reasonably priced, but 12 hours and two changes. The bus? Fine price, at least 20 hours. Mmm, tantalizing options, all of them. Not. I went middle-road and took the train, since the trains are actually comfortable and I can work or sleep, whereas buses are miserable. It took me this many train tickets to get to Munich and back!

So after 12 hours and three trains one lovely Wednesday I arrived in Munich! I was met by a classmate I love who was kind enough to "host" me, even though she didn't have an apartment of her own at the time (the Munich housing market it, to put it mildly, saturated). But enough classmates had apartments we could play musical beds and not get on anyone's nerves!  I arrived in the evening, so we headed straight to a beer garden. I immediately fell in love. They're not kidding with the whole garden thing--this one was outside and surrounded by a wooden fence, with plants and strings of lights along the fence. I had an awesome schnitzel and weissbier. Then I was given the night tour of Munich, which is very grand, with big open areas, wide streets, and some truly monolithic granite buildings. A very different feel from the windy streets and sandstone buildings of Montpellier. And the weather was cool! Absolutely beautiful early fall weather.

Thursday was nice, with more city exploring including a nice lunch in the market part of town (sausage and beer of course) and a trip to the top of city hall to look out over Munich (which is one of those cities which is short due to the rule that nothing can be taller than a certain building, in this case a church). But then, Thursday night, it was time for Oktoberfest!! Whoa. The whole thing is like a carnival, with rides and food and game trailers. I didn't really expect that! But Oktoberfest has the added loveliness of the beer tents. These "tents" are buildings though. They take them down and rebuild each year, which seems crazy to me, since they are real buildings. No canvas roofs here.

The outside of a "tent"

And the inside (from the balcony)

It was wonderful. Liters of beer were a staggering 9.10 euros each, and the waitress never gave you change for your 10 euro bill, but it was awesome. It's hard to see in the picture above, but there is a and in the middle playing, and everyone is singing along. They played everything from Sweet Home Alabama to German drinking songs to Happy Birthday to You. All the seating is big long wooden tables with benches to sit on, and people spent most of the night standing on the benches and singing. And wearing dirndls and lederhosen. I felt completely out of place not wearing one, they were so prevalent. It was great walking down the street and always seeing herds of people wearing what I previously considered a costume. But my friends who live there say it's completely normal to see people wearing the outfits anytime, whether it's Oktoberfest or not, Monday, Thursday, Sunday, whatever. I had no idea! It was really funny seeing fancy and random stores (Tommy Hilfiger anyone?) with lederhosen and dirndls displayed in their windows. And they're expensive! Whoa.

Friday morning it was off to see some castles. Specifically, we went to see Neuschwanstein, the castle that inspired the Disney logo. It's a two hour train ride from Munich through beautiful countryside to get there, then a short bus ride to a cute but not cutesy town that is in the middle of the valley between Neuschwanstein and Hohenschwangau, castles on either side. And there's a gorgeous little lake you can see from each castle. It was just autumn enough that the leaves in the mountains were beginning to change colors. It was really almost too beautiful. We spent the whole day wandering around the areas, taking walking paths through gorgeous woods to get to the castles, climbing down below the bridge to the river, and finally finished off with dinner at a beer garden in the shadow of Neuschwanstein. Love.

Schloss (=Castle) Hohenschwangau

 

Schloss Neuschwanstein

 

Neuschwanstein again, picture taken from...

 

 

 

 

...this awesome bridge. 

 

 We had to get up early to get to the castles, so Friday night was lazy. On Saturday, my friend needed to send off some apartment-hunting emails, so I ventured off on my own and tracked down the English Garden (not hard, given it's one of the largest urban parks in Europe). I promptly fell even more in love with Munich. The Garden is huge and really varied, with everything from a huge flat open field to covered little streams and a huge Chinese tower with... a beer garden around it! There were even people surfing on the little river in areas where a bridge or small dam concentrated the flow! So cool.

Chinese tower beer garden

 After the garden I checked out the palace Residenz),  one of those crazy places with some rooms seemingly entirely furnished with gold and red velvet. Then it was off to dinner in the University area and back to Oktoberfest. This time we stopped for "one beer" at a sort of side-tent outside one of the big ones and ended up staying there all night. Much more relaxed, so a nice, different experience. Unfortunately, the next day it was time for me to leave. Such a good trip! Munich is very highly recommended! I think I'll have to go back sometime. Preferably soon...

Cambridge

A few weekends ago I went to Cambridge, England! It was awesome. I hadn't been to England in a few years and haven't ever been outside London, so it was really cool to check out another part of the country. It was also awesome to land and suddenly see and hear English everywhere. And then there was British junk food, which is awesome (hello Cadbury's and shortbread, mmm). And normal-person sized coffee (with milk even!) instead of the thimbles of espresso served in France. I mentioned I was happy right? Don't get me wrong, I'm enjoying France, but change is a good thing!

So anyway, yes, I was visiting a friend I met during my semester in the Netherlands. He is on a different type of exchange program and got to head to Cambridge for the semester. Very cool. He has a cute room in a townhouse in a nice neighborhood right by campus. Cambridge is a great walkable town, so we went everywhere. The first night I got in lateish, so by the time we ate and headed into town we couldn't get into The Eagle, a famous pub in town. But we went to another place and observed drunk Brits for a while. Quite an interesting adventure. Something I've heard a few times that I can begin to confirm (from Sweden and Cambridge), is that the further north you go in Europe, the quieter the people are sober and the louder they are drunk.

Anyway, Sunday we checked out the Ely Cathedral, a medieval cathedral which was quite pretty.

Then it was back to town for more wandering and some awesome Indian food. India was an important colony, so Indian is the main ethnic food (like Indonesian in the Netherlands). It was a huge delicious awesome meal, and afterwards my friend headed off for a nap, and I went into town for more wandering (I know I keep using that word, but it's the best description)! I treated myself to a cream tea, which is tea with a scone which you eat with clotted cream and jam. So good!

 

Then I headed around some of the famous colleges of Cambridge University. The colleges are huge residential buildings where classes also take place. The picture below is the back of King's College. That is King's chapel on the left.

The next day I ...wandered... around town again while my friend got some work done (it was Monday--weird flights gave me a Saturday-Tuesday crack of dawn trip). I hit a few more colleges, including Darwin college and got some shopping done (it's impossible to find some things in France, like any kind of face product with SPF in it...). I also ate an English breakfast!

I met up with my friend and another guy I knew from Groningen (they're in the same program) and we ate (fish and chips--checking off the classic British foodstuffs). As we were walking around though, we walked past an area where a festival was clearly being set up. We wondered what it might have been until we rounded a corner and saw a poster for the Cambridge Beer Festival!!! Opening that evening!! Needless to say, I was a bit excited. We had to wait quite a while (turns out the opening time we were quoted was only for VIPs, so we just had to chill for an hour and half outside) but it was awesome. A huge tent completely lined with beers from tons of breweries. There was a catalog there were so many :) So happy. It was an awesome way to spend my last evening there.

And I leave you with a picture of the creepiest clock ever, the Corpus Christi clock. The giant grasshopper thing on the top rocks back and forth, "eating time."

The bf's visit, Part 1: Travel

The bf finally came to visit! It's, you know, a little expensive to get to Europe and back, but his friend's awesome mom came through with the Buddy Pass to make it possible for cheap! Thank you thank you thank you friend's mom! Buddy passes let you fly standby, but since spring in Europe is rather popular, we were having trouble finding flights he could be relatively sure of getting on. Then apparently someone said something nasty about Barcelona on the Travel Channel or something because there were a string of completely open flights to Barcelona! So he hopped on a plane with just a few days' notice.  I finished a school project like a mad person and got on a bus to meet him at the airport.  Yes, a 6 hour bus trip and a night in a chuzzle-decorated hostel to be waiting in the arrivals lounge. Awwww. It was awesome.

He was, however, dead when he arrived (even though he got to fly business class!) so we jumped on the bus and headed back to Montpellier, where he promptly fell asleep without trying any more French food than the dried strawberries I had in my bag as bus food. This is the travel post though, so more food talk will be reserved for the next post.

I had to wake up early Wednesday morning for an appointment to get my French residence permit (yup, I'm finally official). He slept till I was done and then we wandered around Montpellier. We did my favorite parks and squares, and then I showed him the center of town/shopping/eating area. I realized that morning that while Montpellier is a nice place to live, it's not a very good tourist town. The few things (that I am aware of I guess!) that you should see, you kinda just see and are then done with. But he enjoyed it anyway. We were both still tired so we had a nap that afternoon, then a relaxed dinner and a few drinks with some classmates and a set of parents who were in town.

Thursday we decided on a small adventure! Nîmes is a town about a 25 minute train ride from me (yeah, no long voyages yet). It was one I hadn't heard much about, but when going through the guidebook bf decided it looked interesting and off we went! First impression was that it was just a really pretty town, with lots of shady tree-lined avenues. We arrived and immediately decided to grab lunch (yeah, we slept late. Hey, it was both of our vacations!), but were being indecisive, so we wandered around town for a while before settling down, and it was very enjoyable! The tree-lined avenues are everywhere, not just near the train station. We wandered by a cathedral or two and then finally sat down. Afterwards, we wandered a bit more until we suddenly came upon the Roman arena! It was the first one I'd seen, and they're really cool! This one looked kinda small, but can hold 24,000 people. While were were there they were setting it up for some mock Roman Games they were having over the weekend.

The arena was pretty open, so we were able to wander all around the top level and check out the views, which were great. While up there, we saw a watchtower on top of a hill and decided to head that way. I then heard in the arena audioguide that it was a Roman tower built on top of an old Celtic tower, which made it sound even cooler.

We meandered our way towards the watchtower (nice to have a companion with a great sense of direction). The city continued to be lovely, but we were both surprised by how nice the Jardin de la Fontaine (Garden of the Fountain) was. You walk through the garden to climb the hill to the tower, but we spent quite a while wandering around the garden, enjoying the big open areas and old Temple of Diana. Once we realized that the whole thing was actually spring-fed, it was even cooler.

Eventually we decided to climb the hill, and it was great! The whole park was really well done. There were hidden grassy areas, little gardens, nice paved paths and little rocky trails up through gardens, all kinds of things. It was quite steep and had us both puffing a bit, but it was totally worth it. The tower was cool, and while trees obstructed a lot of the view, the bits we got were nice!

After seeing those major sites, we just wandered around town a bit more and finally headed back to Montpellier. It was great. Nice, laid back traveling.

Friday we decided to be around Montpellier again and had a lovely picnic in my complex. What? The dorm complex? Why? Well, being in a Mediterranean climate seems to mean that grass is not all that common in "parks" which are often paved or gravel. My favorite park in town (the one by the arch) is mainly gravel with just a few grassy places. And for our picnic, we wanted grass, so we ended up in my complex, which is actually nice and grassy and didn't bother me at all.

That day we were planning our trip that we wanted to do to Lyon the next day, where we would spend Saturday and then head to Barcelona where bf had to leave from Tuesday morning. For some reason the train sites were being cranky, so we had to go to the station to try to book. Turns out almost everything was full! GAH. People must do a lot more Easter traveling than I thought. All we could get would leave us with only about 22 hours in Lyon with a 70% chance of rain all day. We decided to skip Lyon and book the bus to Barcelona for Sunday. We decided to just wait and check the rain when we woke up Saturday morning and go on another day trip if it looked nice.

Good thing we waited! It poured almost all day Saturday. We took it as a sign and were lazy and watched DVDs. Except for the adventure we had just trying to get something to eat.

Sunday morning it was time to finish packing all my winter stuff into bf's suitcase and head to the bus station. Got on the bus to Barcelona for the second time. This one was interesting though, with lots of Spanish temper flaring before we even left Montpellier. My Spanish was nowhere near good enough to follow those lightning-speed exchanges, but several people were angry at various points. After that it was an uneventful bus ride (although even just taking the highway it's very pretty) and we arrived in Barcelona. We had grabbed a hotel near the train station (where the bus arrives and the train to the airport leaves) and got all checked in. Then it was off to find something to eat. This was, of course, Easter Sunday. Oops. Whereas most things had been open in France, almost NOTHING was open in Spain. Luckily we were in just enough of a touristy area there were a few small places open. Then it was back to the hotel, as we'd planned a full Monday of being tourists.

Oh that alarm Monday morning. We were both excited, but it was still not nice to wake up. We quickly decided to snooze for a while and take the metro up to Parc Guell instead of walking the 5 kilometers. SUCH a good call. Barcelona has an amazing natural setting--it's on the beach, but the city goes up into the few serious-ish hills behind it. Parc Guell is on one of those hills. It's up there. It's a park that was going to be a neighborhood, designed by Gaudi, the same crazy architect behind the Sagrada Familia. The project failed commercially, so it's mainly a park, but there are a few completed buildings, some amazing architecture built into the environment, and the main hall type thing with awesome lizard fountain. Can you find me in the last picture? 

Being on a hill, Park Guell also gave amazing views of Barcelona below. Panorama mode on!

The bf and I both loved the park, and I'm pretty sure we walked almost the whole thing. And it's large. But finally we were satisfied and headed downhill towards the Sagrada Familia, stop two on our tour.

The Sagrada Familia is amazing. Whether you like it or not, there is no other way to describe the monster that rises out of Barcelona. It was started in 1882, but Gaudi took over in 1883 and it became another of his crazy creations. It hasn't been worked on continuously since then, but now they're really going. It's supposed to be completed sometime in the 2030s. I told you, it's crazy. This thing is utterly enormous already, and the largest spire (not started) is supposed to dwarf what's already been built. It is so impressive. If you're ever in Barcelona, you absolutely must check it out. And you have to go inside. The inside is so unexpected from the outside--it's intricate and ornate, but in a totally different way.

So we spent another large part of our day in Barcelona being entranced by Gaudi. Even after we left, we detoured to check out some more of his creations (Casa Batllo and the Pedrera) in another part of town on our way towards the sea.

Finally, we ended the Gaudi part of our day and headed to Las Ramblas, which we both found disappointing. It may have had something to do with it being Easter Monday, but after talking to others who have been, it seems like it's usually just a crowded tourist street with pickpockets and people selling postcards and trinkets. The real cool thing to do in that area is get off Las Ramblas immediately! Wander in the Barri Gothic, the quarter around it, and enjoy the cool old feel.  We did that for a while, coming across the few old cathedrals (which just didn't seem so impressive after the Sagrada Familia), and then finally came to the seashore. It was nice! Big harbor with yachts and a nice big beach. We grabbed a beer at one of the beach restaurants and just watched the sea and the people for a while, and it was great. Finally the sun began setting and since the bf had an early flight, we headed home. It was a wonderful day in Barcelona, and if you ever have one day there, I think it's a great itinerary!

And then suddenly bf was on a plane home and I was on a bus back to Montpellier alone. It seemed entirely too short, but it was an amazing trip and writing this has brought back all the fun memories!