So yesterday, I finally got to leave French hickland and go to civilization! Wooo. So I woke up at about 7am.. on a saturday so I could make it in time for the train at 9. Since I live in the middle of nowhere the train station is just like a hut with some train tracks in front of it and of course its like minus a million degrees and windy and everybody is freezing. So we finally get on the train, reconnect with the other exchange students who live in our area but are too far away to see on a regular basis and generally annoy the old people by talking. Luckily the train ride is only like 30 minutes tops and then we all get off the train (duh) and are informed that we have an hour and a half hours to go to the mall! Thank god. I was kind of expecting the mall to be super small (since the only other mall I've been to in France was small) but it wasn't! It was like 4 stories (3, if you're French/another nationality. You guys count floor levels stupidly) and had lots of stores and even an H&M where the clothes had US sizes on them. The sizes here confuse me because sometimes they're in centimeters but usually they're just in numbers that seem to start at around 30, and its impossible to find an online converter! I found something and it said to subtract 10 from the weird European sizes to get your American size, which I don't believe that because I'm definitely not small enough to wear a US size 28. Anyway, we're all at the mall for like an hour and a half and the only thing I bought was a chicken curry sandwich, which is kind of depressing.
(Square with the ferris wheel. Disregard Kamila and Carissa hahah)
After that we took the metro to some square (the subways in Lyon are fast by the way!) where there was a really big ferris wheel that I really wanted to go on but it was 10 euro. We were then informed that we will be going to the marché de noël (Christmas market) where there are things to buy and things to eat. (Watch out though, the food stands are hidden and I'm pretty sure they move around a lot) I ended up buying what was basically a French (Alsacien actually) baked potato with Isa and Bea aka my favorite Brazilians. haha! And I bought a dream catcher from a Québécoise lady, and I actually understood her accent. Woohoo! People from Quebec tend to have really strange and hard to understand accents by the way. I also bought a giant waffle, a hot chocolate and hot orange juice. It was cold! So after the marché du noël we started our journey to the top of a giant hill (mountain) where there is a Basilica called La Basilique de Notre Dame de Fourvière. Its actually pretty beautiful on the inside and out, even though they're doing renovations on the inside and in my opinion is prettier than the Notre Dame in Paris.
So before I continue, I'm going to explain to you why there is a light festival, etc. So the hill that this basilica is on is dedicated to the Virgin Mary and apparently the Virgin Mary has saved Lyon multiple times (from the Plague, Cholera and invading Prussian armies) so every 8th December everyone lights candles in their windows and there are light shows to honor the Virgin Mary. Voilà.
After we did a little tour of the church, we all got coffees/teas/hot drinks etc and I made the mistake of telling some guy who I guess was a volunteer for the church that I wasn't religious. Woops. If I would've known he was a church guy I probably would've just said "Praise Jesus!" but I didn't because he was in plainclothes and I didn't even hear what the first thing he said to me was. So here's our conversation as follows:
him "jkjasd sdask sadjka ?" (probably will you except Jesus as your savoir)
Me "Pardon?"
him "What languages do you speak? and are you religious?"
Me " I speak french and english, and no why?"
him ":O! You need to believe in God, we're not alone... hasdjaskl. (I zoned out btw)"
him " (after like 10 minutes) here take these bible versus. Bye!"
So that was really annoying. After that ordeal we all went back down the hill (mountain) and stumbled upon a band playing some music in front of yet another church. We ended up dancing to them, which if you know me I don't usually dance. so yeah. By that time it was starting to get dark which means all the light shows were starting and which also means all of Europe somehow crammed themselves into Lyon. Because of this we all had to hold hands while walking through these giant crowds, which was a good idea because if we didn't we'd all probably still be in Lyon, lost and looking for where everybody else went. While the holding hand thing was good for us, it was annoying to everybody else as we created a moving wall of people, probably about 15 people long that prevented the others from walking in different directions than us, which pissed them off. I thought it was funny.
This light shows were pretty awesome by the way, and the involved some kind of projector thing projecting light show thingies on the buildings around us. The awesome thing about it was that the images that were projected onto the buildings matched like the windows, columns, and other architectural features so they could change the whole look of the building, make it look all stained glass or like on fire or like it was melting, etc. I have videos which I'll probably upload at a later date. (if I can. I just tried to and it said like two days remaining. fml)
So by this time we've all been standing/walking around for like the entire day and its decided that we go searching for something to eat, and of course every place is like packed, blah, blah, blah. So we keep searching and searching and searching but I think I'm the only person who realized that if we just stayed at one restaurant/food stand and waited we probably would of eaten about three hours before we did. So eventually we went back to the marché du noël where we all bought stuff to eat. I bought a hot dog, which instead of a role there was a baguette so that was interesting. So after we ate we just went to the train station and waited for about an hour and sat down for like the first time the entire day. I'm actually extremely surprised that my legs didn't pop out of their sockets and die. My right ankle still hurts. So of course we get on the train and there are like three billion people which means no seats for the majority of the trip and I ended up falling asleep standing up, which I'm pretty sure is a first for me. After the train arrived at the station at like 12:30AM I got driven home and finally got to sleep at around 1AM.
So to sum yesterday up in one word, it was amazing! Even though it was freezing and my legs almost fell off.
(Square with the ferris wheel. Disregard Kamila and Carissa hahah)After that we took the metro to some square (the subways in Lyon are fast by the way!) where there was a really big ferris wheel that I really wanted to go on but it was 10 euro. We were then informed that we will be going to the marché de noël (Christmas market) where there are things to buy and things to eat. (Watch out though, the food stands are hidden and I'm pretty sure they move around a lot) I ended up buying what was basically a French (Alsacien actually) baked potato with Isa and Bea aka my favorite Brazilians. haha! And I bought a dream catcher from a Québécoise lady, and I actually understood her accent. Woohoo! People from Quebec tend to have really strange and hard to understand accents by the way. I also bought a giant waffle, a hot chocolate and hot orange juice. It was cold! So after the marché du noël we started our journey to the top of a giant hill (mountain) where there is a Basilica called La Basilique de Notre Dame de Fourvière. Its actually pretty beautiful on the inside and out, even though they're doing renovations on the inside and in my opinion is prettier than the Notre Dame in Paris.
So before I continue, I'm going to explain to you why there is a light festival, etc. So the hill that this basilica is on is dedicated to the Virgin Mary and apparently the Virgin Mary has saved Lyon multiple times (from the Plague, Cholera and invading Prussian armies) so every 8th December everyone lights candles in their windows and there are light shows to honor the Virgin Mary. Voilà.
 |
| The Basilica |
After we did a little tour of the church, we all got coffees/teas/hot drinks etc and I made the mistake of telling some guy who I guess was a volunteer for the church that I wasn't religious. Woops. If I would've known he was a church guy I probably would've just said "Praise Jesus!" but I didn't because he was in plainclothes and I didn't even hear what the first thing he said to me was. So here's our conversation as follows:
him "jkjasd sdask sadjka ?" (probably will you except Jesus as your savoir)
Me "Pardon?"
him "What languages do you speak? and are you religious?"
Me " I speak french and english, and no why?"
him ":O! You need to believe in God, we're not alone... hasdjaskl. (I zoned out btw)"
him " (after like 10 minutes) here take these bible versus. Bye!"
So that was really annoying. After that ordeal we all went back down the hill (mountain) and stumbled upon a band playing some music in front of yet another church. We ended up dancing to them, which if you know me I don't usually dance. so yeah. By that time it was starting to get dark which means all the light shows were starting and which also means all of Europe somehow crammed themselves into Lyon. Because of this we all had to hold hands while walking through these giant crowds, which was a good idea because if we didn't we'd all probably still be in Lyon, lost and looking for where everybody else went. While the holding hand thing was good for us, it was annoying to everybody else as we created a moving wall of people, probably about 15 people long that prevented the others from walking in different directions than us, which pissed them off. I thought it was funny.
This light shows were pretty awesome by the way, and the involved some kind of projector thing projecting light show thingies on the buildings around us. The awesome thing about it was that the images that were projected onto the buildings matched like the windows, columns, and other architectural features so they could change the whole look of the building, make it look all stained glass or like on fire or like it was melting, etc. I have videos which I'll probably upload at a later date. (if I can. I just tried to and it said like two days remaining. fml)
So by this time we've all been standing/walking around for like the entire day and its decided that we go searching for something to eat, and of course every place is like packed, blah, blah, blah. So we keep searching and searching and searching but I think I'm the only person who realized that if we just stayed at one restaurant/food stand and waited we probably would of eaten about three hours before we did. So eventually we went back to the marché du noël where we all bought stuff to eat. I bought a hot dog, which instead of a role there was a baguette so that was interesting. So after we ate we just went to the train station and waited for about an hour and sat down for like the first time the entire day. I'm actually extremely surprised that my legs didn't pop out of their sockets and die. My right ankle still hurts. So of course we get on the train and there are like three billion people which means no seats for the majority of the trip and I ended up falling asleep standing up, which I'm pretty sure is a first for me. After the train arrived at the station at like 12:30AM I got driven home and finally got to sleep at around 1AM.
So to sum yesterday up in one word, it was amazing! Even though it was freezing and my legs almost fell off.
Leave reply