fabienne goes abroad: December 2013

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!