Lyon

Lyon! We are in Lyon! After a long day of traveling, we got to Lyon, safe and sound and are staying at our friend's apartment. As luck would have it, everyone in the apartment is at a music festival and we have the place to ourselves. Quite a luxury.

We got in at sundown; not only nice to cool ourselves down from carrying our packs in the warm city, but also for getting a cool shoot.

We started the day off going to a pâtisserie and getting a croissant and a pain au chocolat (guess who got the one with chocolate!) for breakfast. Upon exiting, we were called over to a table of guys who invited us to have a coffee with them on the basis that we were the "best couple in Lyon." We joined them and ate our breakfast listening to them crack jokes, pick on each other and insist on listening to a song about San Francisco by Maxime le Forestier (the link is a video of the song). We got a pretty good insight of the French within our first 10 minutes out.

We spend the rest of the day walking all over the place, mainly to do errands and set ourselves up with food, a cell phone, power adapters, etc., but also to do some sightseeing.

We headed up to Vieux Lyon (Old Lyon) at the top of the hill to visit Notre Dame de Fourviére, an impressive cathedral that was packed on not just any Friday, but Good Friday. At the top of the cathedral was this shinny Mary. I've never seen anything like it.

We made our way down, grabbed a beer from a market and tried to find our way back to a square we had passed by earlier that day.

Surprisingly, we found it quite easily and enjoyed the hot day in the sun, near a fountain, watching a ton of kids play. There were at least as many kids as adults, each of them in constant movement with an endless supply of energy. We are quickly noticing that there are a lot of kids in this city. Maybe its just a regular amount of kids because San Francisco seems to only have four, but it sure seems like a lot. It was refreshing to see these kids play, and it made our day, besides our random first encounter with those French dudes.

The next day we started our day off at the farmers market. Within the first few stalls, we were welcomed with bright and fragrant flowers, colorful and fresh vegetables, pungent cheese and drool-all-over-yourself pastries. We made our way through once and successfully bought red leaf lettuce, pears, white asparagus, rotisserie chicken and a half dozen of the freshest eggs on the way back, mostly without any language hiccups - at least for Casey.

I didn't get any pictures of the market because I was a bit overwhelmed by the whole experience, but I did manage to get a cool photo of used book salesmen just up from the market along the canal. After our walk home, we savored our lunch and took it easy.

Today was the best yet. We took our time getting out the door. Being Easter, there's nothing open and our only plans were to go to the park. We ate a bit of breakfast and spent some time reading and drawing. Then we got ready for the sunny day.

There is a giant park just north of the city center and a nice 20 minute walk away. It is one of the most beautiful parks I've ever been to, and the beautiful weather today put it over the edge.

Here's Casey, appropriately matched with the wild roses. There were seriously the best thing I have smelled in a very long time, and not just because my nose hasn't worked in a very long time.

We walked around a giant lake, watching the birds and all the families out. I was surprised at how many people were out, although with this in their city, I can't blame them for spending every weekend here.

We passed by a carousel and I got this one. I just like it because it feels like film. We then made our way to the zoo, which just happened to be in the park and was free of charge. Jackpot!

I'll leave you to scroll through these:

This last one is probably my favorite. The size of it really doesn't do it justice, so click on it to see some detail. I have no idea how someone can look at this and not believe in evolution.

We're here for one more day and heading to the first farm on Tuesday. From our brief experience at the train station, I think we're going to need some good energy for our travel day.