Tuesday, February 28, 2012

Lyon: Take Two

I'm finally back from my February vacation to Lyon, Prague, Budapest, and London -- it was a blast but it's definitely nice to be back in Bourg, if for nothing else but to stop living out of a dirty backpack and finally have clean laundry. 

One thing that I've learned about myself from this experience is that I do not take nearly enough pictures. I don't know if it was because my camera is too big or if my purse was just too crammed with stuff already, but I found myself rarely taking it out since I was traveling with three other girls, all taking pictures already anyway. Expect a post in the future full of the photos I was too lazy to take. First up, Lyon.

The reason I started this blog (almost four years ago) was to document my summer study abroad adventures in Lyon. When Anna came to France at the end of December, we resolved to return to Lyon to visit our favorite places and discover the city in the winter. The freezing temperatures and snow certainly changed the city. We spent most of our time going from cafe to shop to cafe to shop to cafe to restaurant, bearing the cold for brief moments in between. 

On our first night we bundled up and walked from our hotel in Guillotiere all the way to Vieux Lyon. In retrospect, this was not the smartest of ideas because the cold ended up getting Anna sick at the beginning of our trip (and later at the end), but we enjoyed our scavenger hunt for Mexico Lindo (it was closed, possibly for the whole vacation) and the Irish bars. We ate some kebabs before taking the metro back to the hotel, watching a movie, and going to sleep. 

Our first hotel of the trip

The Pink Tower



Tuesday, February 7, 2012

This was the weather last week. On Tuesday, I walked through a light snow to get to work at the school that I just happen to live the furthest away from. But it was charming. I seldom see falling snow, so it felt a little magical. It also didn't snow enough to actually create snowmen or anything, so that was a bit of a letdown but not a big deal. Now, here is the weather this week:

No amount of Flagstaff and snowboarding trips has prepared me for this cold. The worst is the wind.

This region of France is famous for "le mistral" -- aka evil wind that is merely annoying when it's sunny and messes up your hair, but is lethal when it's already freezing outside. You know how in Arizona the shade is always ten degrees cooler than anywhere else? Well here the wind does the same, but obviously not in a pleasant way. And it doesn't help when people start talking about how next week it will be "10 below" because I constantly forget that they mean -10 degrees celsius, not -10 degrees fahrenheit.
Starting Friday I'm off to Lyon, Prague, Budapest, and London for vacation... a very fun, but still very cold vacation.


Oh dear...