Lyon: La Fête des Lumières

Visit Date: Saturday, 7th December, 2013 - Sunday, 8th December, 2013

Every year in Lyon, there is a festival known as the Festival of Lights (fête des lumières in French). It is held on December 8th every year and the tradition dates back to 1643. The festival is a way of showing the town's gratitude to the Virgin Mary for saving them from the plague. Every year since 1643, a procession has made its way to the Notre-Dame de Fourvière on the 8th December to light candles and give offerings in the name of Mary. Families are supposed to put candles in all the windows of their houses for the 8th December, and nowadays the city council puts on professional light-shows (most of which can be seen in my videos at the bottom of this post!). Around 4 million people visit Lyon for the festival every year, and it's safe to say when I was there, there were a lot of people. Some of the places had barriers to create a funnel and restrict entrance into certain areas, but when you're stuck in a crowd of people trying to get to Place des Terreaux it can be a bit overwhelming. You don't so much as walk to the square as you get carried to it. 

Myself and 4 other friends went to the festival together in my car. We went on Saturday morning and came back Sunday night. Luckily, one of T's teachers has a friend who lives near Lyon and who was willing to let us stay the night for free, which was great for us and we were very grateful! It was a little way out of Lyon but there is a metro park and ride that we left the car at during the day. I had a slight accident in the car park and managed to scrape the side of my car across a wooden barrier! Not exactly my proudest moment and I was rather upset with myself. Luckily the car came out looking better than the barrier... I have a few dents in the passenger side doors and I've scraped a large chunk out of the sill under those doors. 

During the time in Lyon we had a little bit of a look round during the daytime too. We saw Notre-Dame de Fourvière and the large squares, such as Place Bellecour and Place des Terreaux. We also visited the Christmas market which was much bigger than Annecy but a lot of the stuff was kind of same-y. We met up with some friends for the light show, which was really nice. I even got to see J, a friend from my French class back in Sunderland! Trying to get back to where we were staying was a bit of a nightmare though; I'm not sure I've ever been quite so stressed behind the wheel! We got out of the car park alright, but when we got near to the house there were barriers on pretty much every road back to the house. It turns out in the early morning of the 8th December, there is a night-time marathon where runners run with miner lights on their head and wearing high-vis vests... And that really isn't a joke; plus this was around 1am. Yes you heard me right, one o'clock at night/in the morning! The race is called the Saintélyon, and if you click on that link you'll got to the website for the race. The drive back to the house from the metro park and ride should have taken around 30 minutes, in the end it took nearly triple that. My TomTom (lovingly known as John because I have John Cleese as the voice) kept trying to take me a specific way that led me to more barriers. In the end it was a question of trial and error, going left enough times that John eventually found a route that wasn't blocked and we finally made it to bed! 

On the Sunday we did some more exploring and stayed just long enough to see the light show in Bellecour, which some of us had missed the previous day. And then we headed back home. It was a long weekend but well worth it, and I may even go back next year!

Cathédrale Saint-Jean

Cathédrale Saint-Georges

The view from where we stayed!

The view from Cathédrale Notre-Dame de Fourvière.

Cathédrale Notre-Dame de Fourvière

Cathédrale Notre-Dame de Fourvière

Cathédrale Notre-Dame de Fourvière

T, J, H, me and M outside the Cathédrale Notre-Dame de Fourvière

Hotel de Ville (Place des Terreaux)

Palais des Arts (Place des Terreaux)

Me in front of a rather pretty flower.

Fountain

H, T, J and I eating gauffres (waffles) !

The lights on Rue de la République

Looking over one part of the river

Video: Part 1: 

00:00 - 01:00 Place Saint-Jean / Band

01:00 - 03:53 Place Saint-Jean / Light Show

03:53 - 04:02 Rue de la République / Lights (No sound)

04:02 - 09:49 Place des Jacobins / Light Show

09:49 - 12:49 Place des Célestins / Light Show

12:49 - 14:55 Notre-Dame de Fouvière / Light Show

Video: Part 2:

Place des Terreaux

Video: Part 3

Place Bellecour

November Update 2013

Chamonix-Mont-Blanc

Visit Date: Monday, 11th November, 2013

A group of assistants and I decided to take a trip over to Chamonix-Mont-Blanc (also known simply as Chamonix). There were 9 of us so we took 2 cars, myself being one of the drivers. The drive was pretty fabulous, we got to drive through the valleys and the mountains and coming down from Chamonix the roads had a lot of twists and turns which made it all the more fun! We had a look around the town, although there wasn't a whole lot to do there. It's mostly a ski town with Mont-Blanc being right on the doorstep. There is a small train that goes up to a cave and a glacier, but the ticket costs 25€ and being a national holiday the cave was closed. We all decided it would be better to spend that 25€ another day when everything was open. Instead we met up with M's friend, J, and some of J's teachers, and we went on a walk through the woods. After that we went for a nice hot chocolate in a cute café and then headed home.

Chamonix hosted the first ever Winter Olympics in 1924 and is one of the oldest ski resorts in France, sometimes referred to as the "gateway to the European Cascades". The north side of the summit of Mont Blanc, and therefore the summit itself are part of the village of Chamonix. The altitude varies between995m and 4,810m, and while we were there the temperature at 2pm was 3○C, and it only got colder as night fell.

Our group of 9

The 6 of our group who went for the walk, plus J and 3 of his teachers

Chamonix, Videos:

360○ View of the mountains as seen from Place du Mont-Blanc:

Us playing catch with a snowball:

Albertville

Visit Date: Saturday, 9th November, 2013

Over the weekend of the 9th, I had a 4 day weekend because of being given Friday off and Monday was a National Holiday. Rather than sitting in my room being bored all weekend, I decided to organise a trip to Albertville with some friends. I drove there and back because it's only an hour away, and although there isn't much to do in the town, it was worth visiting just to say that I've been there. I probably wouldn't go back again because it seems quite obvious that since the Winter Olympics of 1992 the town hasn't had much of a facelift, so it seems quite run down in places. Nevertheless, some parts of it were typically cute in the usual French way, so it deserves a blog post.

The modern city of Albertville was formed in 1836 by King Charles Albert of Sardinia, who merged the medieval town of Conflans, which has buildings dating back to the 14th century, with the town of L'Hôpital. The 1992 Winter Olympics were organised in the Savoy region, with Albertville hosting it. Some of the sports venues were later adapted for other uses. Some sports venues still remain such as the ice rink designed by the architect Jacques Kalisz, although the town is more industrial than touristic.

The Town Hall

Church

Cité des Conflans

Cité des Conflans

Cité des Conflans

Olympic Park

Albertville, Video:
View from near the Cité des Conflans.

Montpellier

From Wednesday, 30th October, 2013 through to Saturday, 2nd November, 2013, myself and two other friends went to Montpellier on holiday. Montpellier is a city in the south of France, on the Mediterranean coast, however the city itself is located approximately 10km inland of the sea. 

We booked a room through the website airbnb, and managed to get this rather cute place in the centre of Montpellier. The only problem with it was that the trains passed quite close and shook the entire basement that we were in. Nevertheless, the room was also frequented by 2 adorable cats, so we didn't mind too much.

The room we stayed in.

 During the day time on our trip, we mostly wandered around the town in an effort to explore. We also had coffee/tea at little cafés and had the apéro. 

Place de la Comédie

La Prefecture

Church of Saint Roch

L'Arc de Triomphe

Palais de Justice

Chateau d'Eau

Walking through the Antigone

Walking through the Antigone

Ca and I during dinner on our first night

Halloween Night, my friend Ca and I went out with Ca's friend Co; I was the devil and she was a cat. We met some French people who invited us to their place that evening and invited us back the next night. It was pretty cool.

Ca and I in our costumes

The only problem I had was coming back to Annecy. My journey was complicated enough with 3 different parts to the route. First I had to go to Valence by train, then take the coach to Grenoble, and then the train over to Annecy. The first two parts went fine, the coach was a little late but I had plenty of time to change at the other end. When I got to Grenoble I looked on the board to find out which platform I needed to be on, but my train didn't seem to exist. I asked the man working on the Welcome Desk, who informed me that there was a strike and there was nothing going back to Annecy tonight, not even if I went via Lyon. So I had a bit of a panic to find a place to stay for the night; luckily I had already booked a room with Grenoble for my Christmas trip, so I had the address and telephone number on my emails. I managed to make my way there and stayed the night. I then got on the train at 7.30am the next morning, but even that had problems. The train had to stop twice due to fault signals, so it took at least 30 minutes longer to get back to Annecy than normal. 

Nevertheless, I had a great time with Ca and B, and the French people we met!

October Update 2013

Switzerland: Basel

Basel is the third most populous city in Switzerland. It sits at the junction of the borders between Switzerland, France and Germany, and some of its suburbs are in fact in France and Germany. The town is approximately 206m above sea level. It was originally called Basilea, meaning 'kingship'. 

For a more general description about what I did each day, please see the main post: 

http://www.fabienne-emilie.blogspot.co.uk/2013/10/switzerland.html

Sunday, 27th October, 2013

View towards the town centre over the "River Rhine".

An old watermarked sheet of paper inside the "Basel Paper Museum".

Somewhat more intricate watermarks shown inside the "Basel Paper Museum".

A tray that was used to make watermarks, inside the "Basel Paper Museum".

Old vat, inside the "Basel Paper Museum".

I made my own paper :D (Inside "Basel Paper Museum").

I also got to use some old calligraphy tools, inside the "Basel Paper Museum".

The "Basel Münster" was built between 1019 and 1500, however it only took that long because part of it was destroyed and then rebuilt. It is currently a Reformed Protestant Church and it made of red sandstone.

Monday, 28th October, 2013 

A remaining part of the "Old Town Wall".

The "Rathaus" (Town Hall) is a 500 year old building that has been painted red.

The "Splalentor" is a is a former city gate in the ancient city walls. One of the three remaining gateways, it is regarded as one of the most beautiful gates of Switzerland.

The "University" building of Basel.

"Augusta Raurica" is the site of Roman ruins which lies south-east of the city of Basel, in a village called Augst. 

The "Jean Tinguely Fountain" was installed in 1977.

Basel, Video:

The "Jean Tinguely Fountain"