Mom in Lyon

Wednesday: After a grueling two and a half hour work session with Annick where we had to make a selection of the photographs I will be using in my independent study dossier, I headed over to la Part-Dieu to take the Rhone Express to the airport. Unfortunately, due to some train delays, I was running late and my mom ended up having to call me from someone’s phone at the airport to figure out where should meet up. What I didn’t realize was that I wasn’t allowed to go meet her at the baggage claim. Luckily after a little searching, I was able to find her and we hopped back on the Rhone Express. Once we got to Part-Dieu, I got a call from the guy whose apartment we were going to be staying in. He told me that, unlike what I had thought, we needed to take a bus rather than the metro to get to the apartment. All the buses at the train station were lined up in the same area, except for bus 3 which for some reason was located on another street across the way. We finally figured out where to go and met up with Jean-Luc to head over to our little apartment at 2 Rue de la Loge in Vieux Lyon (Loge Gadagne). It is housed in the old buildings of Vieux Lyon, but the inside of the place was modern and adorable and so a great find. Once we dropped our stuff off, we headed over to try out what I had read was the best quenelles (Lyonnais specialty) in Lyon at Café du Sole. The quenelles were to die for. They were cooked to perfection in a melt in your mouth sauce. I can’t wait to go back there! After dinner we wandered back to our place and headed to sleep since my mom was so tired from her long day of traveling.

Thursday: Unfortunately, I had a little mishap with my alarm Thursday morning and didn’t make it to the high school where I help teach English (whoops!). We woke up late, had a delicious breakfast of pastries from a nearby boulangerie and headed over to my host families’ apartment so that I could do a little packing before lunch. My host dad and mom came home to have lunch with my mom. I was impressed that my mom was able to at least follow along with most of the conversation (even though it was hard at times for her with how fast my host parents talk). It was so nice for me to be able to have my everyone meet each other. After lunch, we had to run out to head over to my political history of health class. Luckily that class really only lasts for about an hour and a half, so my mom was able to head over to the little café to wait for me for a little bit. After class, we took the metro back to Bellecour and walked along la Rue de la Republique over to Hotel de Ville and Place de Terreaux. I was able to take my mom to my favorite bakery in Lyon (Boulangerie Keyser) to try the delicious Bichon au poire, to show her the great area on a beautiful sun shining day and to show her the cool underground parking lot (which she thought was pretty interesting). After hanging out in the beautiful sunshine, we headed back to the apartment to take a little rest before dinner. The day before on the way to the apartment, Jean-Luc had recommended this little Bouchon right next to where we were staying where he made reservations for us. Dana, Jose and Barbara (my program director) met up with us for dinner at this little place. It was an adorable place and quite fun because Jean-Luc stopped in many times throughout the night with more clients. We sat down and were given a carafe of water that was almost as big as I am. It was hilarious how difficult it was for us to pour this thing. Bouchons are great, but they are always a little bit hard for me since most of the menu is usually pork. Luckily we found one entrée and one main dish for me to try that didn’t have pork. For a starter, I tried a pate of chicken livers covered in tomato sauce. I was very scared to try this one, but I was very pleasantly surprised by how good it was. After that, I had beef cheek stewed with potatoes. The meat was so tender that it literally melted in my mouth. Finally, for dessert, I had a traditional Lyonnais praline tart (which I had yet to try before this meal) with fresh cream that was delicious as well. It was truly an amazing meal, with amazing company. We stayed at the restaurant talking for well over three hours before we even realized what time it was!

   

 

Friday: Friday morning, we got up and spent some time walking around Vieux Lyon doing what is called “trabouler” which means to walk through the little passageways through buildings called traboules. My mom was actually a little nervous when I told her we’d be walking through these little random passageways, but when she saw how interesting they were, I think she warmed up a bit more to the idea of it. After that, we wandered back to the Musee Gadagne (the Lyon history museum) where we spent a few hours learning more about Lyon history. It was great to be able to teach my mom all that I have learned and discovered in Lyon so far and in my Lyon history course. I really enjoyed both the history as well as the marionette part of the museum. After that, we walked across the Saone to the Presqu’ile to Place Bellecour to go to the adorable little restaurant with the amazing onion tarts. My mom loved the onion tart and cervelle de canuts that I had her try, but I think that she was most excited about the fact that the meal came with a little side salad (there really aren’t as many vegetables served at French restaurants as there are in the states). After lunch, we hopped on the metro to the funicular to go up to Fourviere and the Basilica. Since it was Good Friday, there was a service going on when we got there so we had to sneak in very quietly. I was disappointed that there was scaffolding covering up all of the ceiling (I thought that the repair work was supposed to be done) but it was still awesome to see the incredible mosaics all over the walls ( I really have never seen such amazing mosaic work). After that, we spent some time taking in the view of Lyon and then headed down the hill. The plan was to go see he ruins from the Roman theaters. My mom was quite tired, but after a little convincing, we headed over there and she was very impressed. After that, we walked the rest of the way down to Vieux Lyon and took a little rest before dinner. We had decided that we wanted to try a really good restaurant since Lyon is said to be the gastronomical capital of France. So, we had called and made reservations at about 5 different restaurants for Friday night. We ended up choosing one just across the Saone from where we were staying called Archange. It serves French cuisine with a little bit of Asian inspiration. For the first course, I had these little rings of quail with hot peppers, carrots, caramelized onions, and cherries. Followed by duck with shitake mushrooms in a soy sauce with vegetables. There was this one vegetable on both of our plates that was a disk with little holes in the middle, but we couldn’t figure out what it was. Finally for dessert I had ­­­­­­­­­­a delicious puff pastry with strawberries, some sort of cream (not exactly sure what the flavor was) and a mascarpone mousse.

Saturday: Saturday morning, we woke up, packed up our stuff from the apartment and headed over to my host family’s apartment so that I could pack up my bag for the week. We left our stuff there and took the metro over to the market at la Croix Rousse so that I could show my mom the awesome market that I spend a lot of my time at. Since it was a Saturday, she was really able to see the market in action and even to see the organic market. We bought some fruit, cheese and bread to eat for lunch later and bought a crepe to eat for breakfast. She was really impressed by the quality of the produce in the market. After that, we headed back to my place to grab our stuff and then headed to Part-Dieu to take the Rhone Express to the airport.

Overall it was great having my mom in Lyon and getting to show her how great a city it is!

Lots of work, not a lot of time

This week has been super short with my mom getting here on Wednesday, so its mostly been just a whirlwind of work…

Monday: As usual I had French class bright and early Monday morning. After class, Dana and I met up with the girls we met from Brown (Lauren and Amelia) for lunch at La Mere Jean (the incredible onion tart place). After lunch, I headed back home to really make some headway on my presentation before going over to Marie-Jose’s for Monday night dinner. I was pretty tired, so it was fun, but I was certainly less peppy than normal. After that, I was up until the crack of dawn doing work and skyping with Seth.

Tuesday: I had planned to go to the market as usual, but after having stayed up so late on Monday night, I just had to sleep in and do work on my presentation and independent study at home. After that, I went to my last real class on the history of Lyon (since the last two classes will be devoted to presentations and the final exam). After that, I had a wonderful dinner of roasted chicken with my host family. It’s so weird that it was a week since the last time that we all ate dinner together, and it’s going to be 2 weeks until the next time that we all eat together!! After dinner, I spent the rest of the evening working on my projects and planning for when my mom gets to Lyon.

Wednesday: I woke up early for my meeting with my tutor. We made some major progress on my presentation and I felt a lot more secure about it after our session. After that, I headed back home to have some lunch, pack, and do some work on my independent study. Next I headed to meet up with Annick to work on my independent study. Can’t wait to go pick up my mom from the airport!!

Brusselicious and the adorable town of Bruges

Thursday: Thursday afternoon, I headed over to part dieu to take the Rhone Express to the airport. Dana and I got to the airport pretty early so we had a little time to hang out in front of the gate before our flight. We had planned to buy some food in the airport to have for dinner since our flight took off at 6:50pm and we knew we wouldn’t make it to the B&B for quite a while. But, after getting through security, there was pretty much nothing near our gate, so we just figured we’d find something in Brussels. We had an easy and pretty quick flight to Brussels and arrived early at 8:00pm. We headed off the plane (which was pretty much empty – on 25/100 seats were taken, which I swear I haven’t experienced on a plane since I was 10), through the rather large Brussels airport and down to the bottom floor to find the bus we needed to take to get into the center of Brussels. We headed outside and found the bus stop with a ton of people standing around it, so we figured that it wouldn’t be that long before the bus arrived, especially since we knew that the bus was supposed to come every half hour. However, it took 45 minutes before the bus arrived and then we waited around about 10 minutes before the bus left. After about 15 minutes on the bus, we realized that we had forgotten to ask anyone before getting on the bus to make sure that this bus went to the main train station in Brussels. Unfortunately, we found out that we had screwed up and that the bus didn’t go exactly where we wanted it to. So, once the bus finally arrived in the center part of the city, we had to get out and take the metro to the main station so we could take the tram to where we were staying. By this point, we were absolutely famished and decided we needed to find somewhere to eat near the central station before figuring out the tram. We asked a bunch of people and were told that there were a ton of places just outside the station. We walked out and found a few places, however, none of the places where still serving food (it was only 10:15pm – not that late to eat in Europe!). We were frustrated, exhausted and starving and decided to walk to the other side of the station. We still saw nothing and I decided we should try to go into a hotel and see if we could find anything to eat there. We walked in (10:31pm) and they told us that the kitchen had just closed but that we could order some snack-type food at the bar. We were just thrilled to have found something. We lucked out and the “snacks” were actually real meals and we had some delicious tortellini with vegetables. Honestly we were just thrilled to have food at all. Once we finished it was pretty late, so we decided to take a taxi to the B&b since we were getting a little nervous about walking around at night. We got to the place, said hi to Heleen and went to bed because we were so tired. We were happily surprised by the amazing quality of the beds that we had given that we had found the place for a pretty good price.

Friday: Friday morning we had a lovely breakfast with fresh croissants at the B&b then we headed out to try to take a tour of the EU parliament. Unfortunately, all the tickets for the tour had been sold out half an hour before the tour was scheduled to start, so we weren’t able to take the tour, but we did head over to the Parlementarium which is an interactive exhibit explaining the development of the EU and the different agreements and parts that make it up. It was a really fascinating exhibit and had some really cool technology incorporated into it. After that we walked over to the Cathédrale des Sts-Michel-et-Gudule. We had read in our guide that this was a pretty boring church compared to many others in Europe, but we decided to check it out anyhow. Once inside, we were pleasantly surprised – it was a really beautiful Church and it was built in a different style from many of the other churches I have seen so far in Europe. There was also a really cool crypt under the church that housed remnants of previous churches that had been built on that site which was really cool. After that, we wandered over to the main Market square to find a place for lunch. We eventually found this adorable little Italian place where I had Cannelloni for the first time in my life. I had Cannelloni a la Bolognaise and it was melt in your mouth delicious. I always get full before I finish a plate of food, and I just wished I had had more room in my stomach, it was that fantastic.

After lunch, (Dana and Heleen rolled me out of the restaurant…jk) we headed over to check out the gorgeous Market square. All the buildings on the square were fabulously ornate and we decided to check out the Brussels museum. There was a really interesting history of Brussels as well as a very cool exhibit showing the Manneken Pis wearing all sorts of traditional costumes from all over the world. After that, we found our way over to the Chocolate Museum, where we had a great mix of learning, watching and tasting. There was some great information on the production and processing of chocolate, followed by a really interesting demonstration by a chocolatier on the production of pralines, followed by tasting of many different types of chocolate. After the museum, we wandered over to see the Manneken Pis  (which was a bit disappointing because he was dressed up in a Dracula outfit) and ended up exploring the many chocolate shops in the area. At one of them, we met this really nice girl who is planning on going to Seattle next year to study and who definitely gave us more free chocolate to taste than we bought. We had a fantastic time talking to her and trying many types of chocolate. Next, we ventured over to check out the Bourse (the stock exchange) and tried, unsuccessfully, to convince the guard to let us go inside. After that, we took the metro back to where we were staying and spent some time at the internet café across the street so that we could plan our day in Bruges for the following day. After a few hours, we were starting to get hungry and decided to go a restaurant around the corner for dinner called Brasserie La Renaissance. I had a wonderful tomato and mozzarella salad and I tried Dana’s mussels (a Brussels specialty) and decided that I certainly don’t hate them and that I might even like them.

  

   

   

Saturday: After another restful night, we woke up early to eat some breakfast and take an early train to Bruges. Bruges is a quaint little town about an hour northwest of Brussels by train. We arrived in town and headed over to the main Market Square to climb up the Belfry (bell) tower. While we were in line, Dana saw one of her friends from a summer program during high school that is currently studying abroad in Brussels. It was really such a bizarre thing but an awesome coincidence nonetheless. We climbed up the 366 steps to the top to see a gorgeous view of the adorable town of Bruges. 

After we climbed down we walked a bit more around the Market square before deciding to find a place for lunch. We found this little café on one of the side streets and I had a wonderful Caesar salad. It was really funny though because they gave me almost as much cheese as lettuce, so naturally, I left most of it on my plate and was scolded by the waiter; a pretty funny experience. After lunch, we headed over to Burg square to see the outside of the ornate town hall and to go inside the intricately decorated basilica of the holy blood, which is said to possess a vial of Christ’s blood. Once inside, we decided that it was a necessary experience for us to wait in line to see the vial. Once we got up to the front, we felt super awkward, and were certainly not convinced about the authenticity of what they were claiming to be Christ’s blood, but nonetheless, it was an interesting thing to see. After that, we headed down to the canals. We walked around a cute little market on the banks of the canals and then we took a canal cruise in a little bit. At one point during the ride, one of bridges we went under (44 total on the 5km of canals) was so low that we had to rebalance the weight in the boat in order to fit under it. 

After the lovely canal cruise, we headed over to see the Church of Our Lady, which is famous for housing one of the only statues of Michaelangelo’s to ever leave Italy – a Madonna. However, after seeing the beautiful church, we decided it wasn’t worth their prices to go in and see the statues, so we headed on to the Diamond museum. Bruges was a major center of Diamond trade during the middle ages before it was taken over by Antwerp and then Brussels. We learned a ton about the history of diamond trade, about diamond manufacturing, etc… It was a really interesting museum and I really enjoyed it. After that, we wandered through a bunch more chocolate shops on our way to try to check out an 18^th century Almshouse, but unfortunately, it had just closed before we got there. At that point, we decided to go explore the Minnewater (lake of love) that was gorgeous and also a super serene and peaceful place to pass some time on what turned out to be a beautiful day. After that, we wandered around a bit more through the little streets in the town before going to the Gruuthuse Hof for dinner. I had an absolutely delicious root vegetable soup, followed by a perfectly crispy yet mouthwateringly moist pan seared filet of salmon with a salad and fries, followed by homemade vanilla ice cream. A lovely dinner to finish off a fantastic day. 

After that, we got back on a train to Brussels. At one point during our train ride, the guy behind us asked if there was any chance that we had any gum. After giving him some, we ended up talking to him for a while. It turns out he is from Ohio and since Seth is considering Case Western for law school, we ended up talking for a while about his views (not so positive) about Cleveland. After that, we were joking around and he asked if we wanted to see the awesome thing that he had purchased that day. He pulled out this hilarious little keyboard that you blow into in order to make noise. It was super funny when the guy behind us turned around and said in a fantastically awful accent “oh, oh, so you like to blow.” Such a funny train ride. We were distracted and so barely made it off the train in time at our stop at Midi train station. Once we got off however, we didn’t recognize where we were and were pretty lost. We ended up going up to this old lady and asking her what train station we were at (we certainly sounded pretty stupid) and she ended up helping us find where we needed to go in order to find our train to head back to the B&b.

Sunday: Sunday we woke up a little later and had a nice relaxing breakfast. After that, we headed over to the Market square for the tour of the Town hall. We had been told earlier in the week that the tour was scheduled for Sunday at 10am, but once we got there, the tourist office told us that it was actually at 2:30pm. We decided to try anyway, and they were wrong, so we ended up taking the tour at that point. Luckily we decided to ignore their advice and check it out for ourselves. The tour was really interesting and I learned a ton about the history of Belgium/Brussels. After that, we spent a bit more time in the square and bought a few souvenirs. At this point, we realized that we had still missed out and eating Belgian waffles and decided that it was time to remedy this issue. I had a fantastic waffle with strawberries, whipped cream and chocolate. The waffle not only lived up to my expectations, but it surpassed it (except for the fact that we didn’t really get a fork to eat our incredibly messy waffles with…haha). 

After that, we hopped back on the metro to head out to the Atomium, which was built for the 1958 World Expo. After making it through some long lines, we headed into the Atomium. We went through 5 layers of fascinating history about the World Expo and about the construction of the Atomium and other buildings for the major event. After making our way through the exhibit we headed back down to take the elevator to the top of the Atomium to see a beautiful view of Brussels. 

Next, we headed over to check out the Basilica of the holy heart which we had heard was built in a beautiful Art-nouveau style. Unfortunately, it was closed (it surprised me that a church would be closed on a Sunday…), but we took some beautiful photos as we wandered through the park in front of the church and had a delicious lunch at a little brasserie nearby. Next, we headed back to the B&b to grab our stuff and head over to the airport. We left ourselves much more time than we needed given Dana and I’s experience getting from the airport into the center of Brussels. We, however, had a relatively easy time and made it back to the airport by metro and then by bus and through security in under an hour. After that, we had some time in the airport to do a little bit of work before our short plane ride back to Lyon.