Dana and I have been traveling to
amazing destinations almost every weekend all semester. We decided that we
wanted to spend our last weekend “traveling” to Lyon so we could really
appreciate and take advantage of how amazing of city Lyon is. We had an awesome
4 days exploring new places and returning to some of our favorites.
Friday: I woke up and headed to
Bellecour to drop off some more photos to print to finish my dossier. I also
did some shopping along Rue de la République. I found a cute little romper that
was buy one get one free and t should be a great thing for this summer
(especially during the crazy heat in Louisville). After that, Dana and I met up
at the Opera house to see a dance performance. It ended up being the end of the
year performance by some dance students. The first dance was a contemporary
dance that was really bizarre. We were a little concerned that all the dances
were going to be really weird, but the other ones were pretty good. My favorite
was this group of boys probably ages 8-15 or so dressed in jeans and white
polos. They were fabulous and the little boy was absolutely adorable. Also,
they danced to Duke Ellington which made me even happier. After the
performance, we headed over to Entrecote for lunch. I had gone with Marie and
Gregoire a few weeks back and really enjoyed it, so Dana and I decided to go
back. We had the formule again so I had a wonderful salad with walnuts followed
by perfectly tender beef covered in a delicious sauce (I honestly have no idea
what it was, but it was fabulous and I wish I knew how to make it) with fries.
It was a lovely lunch. After lunch, we went over to this silk workshop behind
Place de Terreaux where we learned all about how the print on silk using design
blocks to add each color individually. The scarfs, ties and other silk products
that they produced were beautiful, but quite expensive, so we just spent some
time looking and enjoying them before heading back out. Having learned about
how to print on silk, we decided to go over to the Musée de Tissus (which
turned out to be right across the street from Marie-José’s and we never even
noticed it!). It was really quite interesting. Attached to that museum was the
Musée des arts décoratifs located within a beautiful house. The furniture was
beautiful, and I really appreciated seeing something so cool right in Lyon (we
always see cool stuff like that when we travel, so it was great to explore Lyon
in new way). We finished our sightseeing for the day and headed back home. I
spent some time cleaning up in my room, making plans for Louisville, finalizing
my dossier and had a nice dinner with my host family.
Saturday: Saturday morning, I woke up and officially finished my independent study dossier! After that, I had a nice lunch with my host family before meeting up with Dana and Eduardo. We tried to go to the Centre de la Résistance et de la Déportation (since Lyon was very important in the resistance movement during the second world war). However, for some reason it was closed (I checked the hours and it was certainly supposed to be open…), so we decided to go to Vieux Lyon one last time to take in the beautiful old part of the city of Lyon. I have always loved this quarter of Lyon, but after having taken a course on the history of Lyon, it has become even more of a special place for me. Since it was a nice sunny day, we decided to get some ice cream at one of the little places along Rue Saint Jean. I had some fabulous dulce de leche and pistachio ice cream. Since we didn’t want to pay more to sit at the tables, we ended up eating our ice cream on a stoop right next to the ice cream shop. The joys of traveling while I’m still young! After that, we hopped on the funicular to go up to Fourviere. We went into the basilica hoping that there wouldn’t be a service going on, but there ended up being one, so, seeing as it was my last time going up to Fourviere, I took pictures anyways. We enjoyed the beautiful view of Lyon and really took in the amazing city. We headed back down the hill by funicular and took the metro to Foch to go to Les Halles. Les Halles is an indoor, covered, gourmet market. The middle section is where they sell high quality products and encircling that inner ring are little nice restaurants. I bought some fantastic looking ravioli with goat cheese and some with basil and ricotta. Once we finished taking in the fantastic market, we all headed home to relax for a bit and to get ready for dinner. Dana’s birthday was Sunday, so Saturday night José, Eduardo and I went to Mattsam Restaurant Messob which is an Ethiopian restaurant. I had never eaten Ethiopian food before, and it was pretty good. After dinner, we went to the Smoking Dog in Vieux Lyon. We had a few drinks and hung out. It was a really nice bar and we celebrated Dana’s 21st birthday in style!
Sunday: Dana and I met up Sunday
morning to go to the market at the Croix-Rousse. Dana had never been and so it
was really fun to show her around the market that I have come to love so much. We
bought 3 big heads of lettuce, some beets, some fresh goat cheese, and
strawberries for our dinner on Monday. I also bought a few passion fruits since
I absolutely love them and unfortunately cannot get them in the states. Once we
finished our shopping at the market, we went to the Sushi Shop in Bellecour to
have lunch. They had a really great deal for their lunch menu and we got miso
soup, carrot salad, and 18 pieces of sushi (which of course I wasn’t able to
finish), but it was a pretty good. After lunch, we headed over to Parc de la
tete d’or (park of the golden head) to meet up with Jose and Eduardo. Parc de
la tete d’or is a 290 acre park right in the middle of the city that was opened
in 1857. It was actually my first time going there and I realized that I had
really been missing out. It is a gorgeous place. It contains a zoo, beautiful
displays of flowers everywhere, sports facilities and even a little lake. We
spent a while just taking in the beautiful park and enjoying the sunny weather
(even if it was a little bit windy). Once we finished at the park, we headed
over to the Croix-Rousse to see a one-woman production of Le Petit Prince (we
got in for free with cultural passes that we had). Dana had called to ask if it
was a show meant for kids, and they had said no, so we were a little frustrated
when we arrived and the only people there were kids and their parents, but it
ended up being pretty good. It was easy to understand and I love the Petit
Prince, so it turned out to be a lot better than expected. And it was
surprisingly well done given that there was only one woman. After the show, I
headed back down the hill and took the metro home. Once I was home, I had a
nice dinner with my host family.
Monday: I met up with Dana for lunch
in Vieux Lyon at Café du Soleil (or Sole… I’ve seen it written different
ways….) to have quenelles. This restaurant is where they make the quenelles
that they send to extremely well, known and highly regarded restaurants like
Paul Bocuse. The quenelles at this little café, however, are sold for a mere
fraction of the price. We sat outside on the terrace and the quenelles were
delicious. I had been before to the restaurant with my mom and I was very happy
to be able to go again before leaving France. After that, Dana and I took the
metro to Gare de Vaise and then from there the bus to go to Ile Barbe which is
an island in the middle of the Saone river. The Ile Barbe monastery is one of
the oldest in Gaul. Records of its existence go back to the start of the 5th
century. It was destroyed during several periods: by the Saracens in 725, by
the Hungarians in the 9th century and by the Protestants in 1562.
Repaired each time it was destroyed, the Abbey was completely dismantled during
the Revolution. It was an important center for the arts during the Romanesque
times, and was also a center of pilgrimage to the Notre-Dame de l’Ile before
the Notre-Dame de Fourviere existed. Now it is an adorable little island with
the old church and beautiful houses. It was also interesting because on our way
in, we waked a long a little one lane bridge to get to the island. However, it
was actually a two lane road and cars could traverse the bridge going either
direction. I was totally scared that cars where going to crash and there was
going to be a disaster… only in France. After that, Dana and I headed back to
my house to cook for Monday night dinner. We looked up the recipe for the cake
we were planning to make and headed to monoprix to buy the ingredients.
However, there was a little bit of a problem when buying the sugar. We knew we
needed to buy powdered sugar, but in France what they call normal crystalized
sugar is “sucre en poudre”. We couldn’t find powdered sugar anywhere (and also
didn’t know the exact word in French), we tried to explain that it was really
fine sugar that is used in cakes. Eventually it was the security guard who
realized that what we actually needed was “sucre glace”, but he told us that we
had to go to a special store to buy it. He explained to us where to go.
Meanwhile we begrudgingly went to buy the other products and figured that we’d
have to go figure out where to buy it.
Luckily he cam running over and had found the powdered sugar, so all was well. After
that we went back to the house to cook. We made a salad with beets, goat cheese
and caramelized almonds, some roasted broccoli, and the delicious fondant au
chocolat cake that we had made the first week in the cooking class. We made a
cake with 2 layers with fresh strawberries and whipped cream in the middle.
However, we had some pretty funny experiences while cooking (and luckily
Martine didn’t get home until we were pretty much done cooking). I caramelized
the nuts and put them on a sheet to put them in the oven. While I was doing
that, I set the pot back on the stove thinking that I had turned it off. Unfortunately
I hadn’t and the pot ended up being burnt being the point of being able to be
fixed. Fearing my host mother’s wrath, we somehow decided that the best plan
was to throw the pan out the window… so that was pretty ridiculous. Next, the
whole oven started smoking (while it was heating up) because there was leftover
scum at the bottom that was burning. Finally the silliest thing was that with
both layers of the cake that we cooked, once we finished cooking them and took
them out of the oven, there were enormous indentations in the bottom where
there was no cake, it was like someone had carved out little holes in the cake.
It was super strange, especially since it happened twice. But oh well, Dana and
I had a really fun time cooking together. From there, we eventually made it to
Bellecour with all the food (it was certainly not an easy task, and everyone in
the metro was definitely staring at us…) to meet up with Eduardo. He helped us
bring the cake over and we spent the entire walk to Marie-Jose’s yelling at him
to make sure not to drop our precious beautiful cake. We had a fabulous last
dinner with Marie-Jose. We gave her a card and a bottle of wine from the
Perroud’s vineyard to thank her for hosting us each week. The food we made
turned out to be amazing. We even put candles in the cake we made and all sang
happy birthday to Dana. I was even happy with the songs we sang at the end of
the night (Emmene-moi, bonsoir mes amis and one other). It was a fabulous last Monday
night dinner and I will certainly miss them.
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