Last weekend after a few weekends in Angers some of us decided we wanted to go discover another part of France, so Elizabeth from Texas, the 5 Finnish girls and me went to Lyon for the weekend.
Lyon is the birthplace of French cooking so I was excited, but that’s all I really knew and I had pretty low expectations. But little did I know that Lyon would turn out to be one of my favorite places in France.
We took the slow trans to Lyon because it was about 30 Euros cheaper but took 3 more hours. They ride was so nice though. We got to see a whole different part of France and boy was it beautiful. The rolling hills and small towns were so beautiful (see my pictures on Facebook).
4 of us couch surfed again. And once again it was a really great experience. We actually stayed with a girl who graduated from the University and program I am going to now. So that was really cool and we had lots to talk about. The first night we cooked dinner for all the roommates who lived at the flat we were staying. We all got nervous when Alex (one of the French roommates) came into the kitchen while we were cooking and told us he was learning to be a chef, great a French chef would have to eat our pasta. Hahaha- It turned out really good, and everyone enjoyed it.
Saturday morning we started by going to the highest point in the city to get a good view. St. Nicolas Basicalic is at the top there and we took lots of pictures and admired the views. Next we decided to go to theses 2 old Roman theaters near by- and this is when things got CRAZY!
So we are walking up to the theater and there is a tour group- no big deal we see this everyday- I saw a girl with long blond hair (but only her back) and thought to myself that she looked a lot like one of my sorority sisters- but there was no way. (Ok background story- Courtney, a sorority sister of mine, told me that she was going to the south of France for spring break with a group from UCF. 3 weeks ago she reminded me- but I already have plans to go to the south of France later, so I wished her a good time and told her that I would see her in August). Anyways- back to the story. This group of tourists is walking into the museum, we continued to walk into the theater, and then I saw my TEACHER for UCF. My heart kinda stopped and I ran down the stairs telling the other girls that I would meet up with them in a second. I went in the lobby of the museum and went up to Courtney and just said “this is so CRAZY” we just kinda looked at each other and were amazed that we had just ran into each other. I get excited when I see friends at Wal-Mart or target back home- so you can only imagine how happy I was to see Courtney. Everyone in her tour group took pictures of us. It was SO good seeing someone from home and very surreal. I think it was then I realized that I have been gone for 2 months, and how much I miss everyone back home. We talked for a few mins, I talked to my teacher for a little and then we both had to leave. There is one thing that is for sure, there is no way this could have been a coincidence. I truly believe God wanted us to see each other, and it really made me so happy to see a friend from home. So crazy=)
Anyways- the rest of the day was really good. We played in the theater, took the most lovely walk down to Le Vieux Lyon (the old part of the city). The old part of the city was SO beautiful and just nice to walk around. We had a good lunch at a little restaurant and did so shopping in the city center. Elizabeth and I also went to the fine art museum.
Alex, the French chef in training we are staying with, cooked us a great French dinner. I think it might have been better than our expensive lunch =). We headed to a house party to see some of the Finnish girl’s friends from school in Finland. It was really cool because there were about 20 people there but only 3 of them were French, we had some good conversations with people from all over and then headed to the Boat.
So Lyon has 2 rivers that run though it, and on the banks of the river there are some boats that are bars and nightclubs. It was really fun, but really crazy. EVERYONE was dancing and so full of energy. It was cool that we were on a boat though, but I did not have enough energy to fully enjoy it. We went home when the bar closed at 3 am. Once we go back to the apartment we all needed the bathroom. We got in the elevator- and before we got to our floor- it stopped =/ yep we were stuck in the elevator at 3:30 am all needing the bathroom. We called the mechanic’s number and they told us it would be 45 mins. Aura and I watched the Lion king on my iPod and finally we were saved =)
Lyon was so amazing. The city was so beautiful and I feel like I could walk forever and never get bored. If you’re going to Europe- go to Lyon! You won’t regret it!
This past week was really busy with school, but it was also St. Patrick’s Day, so we had a good time. There are loads of Irish pubs and Irish people living in Angers, so we went to a few of the pubs on Wednesday and boy were they packed! It was so much fun though. Everyone was really excited and there were live bands at a lot of the pubs and everyone was dancing and having a good time. We even saw one of our professors at a pub- I feel like this would never happen in the US.
This pasted weekend was our trip to the Loire Valley castles. Angers is in the Loire and basically there are castles in every town here. So we had a nice 2-day tour organized by students who are training to be tour guides. We took a coach bus to all of the castles so we got to see lots of castles in a short amount of time. It was nice to have guides at each castle too, instead of just walking though each castle and learning nothing. It goes without saying that the castles were so beautiful. We all were deciding which one we would rather live in =) a girl can dream. Some of the castles have families living in them today still, I asked if they had sons, but they are my little brother’s age =( oh well
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