What's with all the Lions?

Today the 'vacation' is officially over. We had orientation followed by a few introductory classes. Luckily the walk over went about 1,000 x's better and took about 1/4 of the time it did yesterday. We met up w/ the study abroad coordinator in the courtyard of the school & went on a tour. Saw the pretty standard stuff - classroom, computer lab, cafe area. After that, we went into a classroom and had 3 hours of lecture. They don't have a/c since they don't have any students besides international students in the summer. And it was 90 out today. So it was likea sauna in there! The lecture went pretty fast, then we went to a cocktail hour. At noon. Because apparently it's common to serve champagne and such at 12:30 on a Monday! Was kind of random, but nice of them to have a little welcome reception for us.

After that, we headed out for a bus tour of the city. The guide spoke english & the bus was air conditioned, so it was heavenly. We have come to the conclusion that we are in one of the least picturesque areas of the city. Luckily, we are only a 20-30 minute walk from the neat part of the city, Lyon Vieux. That translates into Old Lyon. We drove thru that area & then up to a hill that overlooks the city.

First stop was to see some remains of a Roman Theater. Was really neat - dates back to 15 b.c.!!! They didn't actually discover it until 1933. At that time, a convenant was built on top of the ruins, and one day the nuns were digging in their garden & started to unearth some odd looking things. Low & behold, it was the remains of a Roman Theater. There are 2 & they use both for live performances during a summer festival.

Next stop was the top of the hill where the Notre Dame was located. It's a gorgeous church that was also built because of the Franco-Prussian war. Turns out that some guy prayed to God & said that if He would spare Lyon, he would build a temple out of gratitude. The Prussian army stopped their attack in Dijon, and never got to Lyon, the man kept up his end of the promise & built this gorgeous church. The exterior & interior are like night & day. The exterior is all limestone, and the interior has thousands upon thousands of mosaics. Unfortunately it was pretty dark in the church so none of my pictures turned out. They probably wouldn't have done it justice anyways. Just gorgeous.

Behind the church there is a great place for Panoramic views of the city. Lyon has 2 rivers, the Rhone & the Saone, so you could see both and really get an understanding of the lay of the land. This is when the tour guide explained that the Part Dieu (where we are staying) was the industrialized area which explains why we didn't see anything worth checking out yesterday...

After the church, we went back down to Lyon Vieux to check out some secret passageways, called 'Traboules'. A few date back to Roman times but most were built in the 19th centurfy. You basically push a button & a door opens that will either take you under the street or will take you to a passageway that connects 2 houses. These were really put to use during the Occupation times of WWII. The guide said there are over 400 of them throughout Lyon & most of them are still open to the public. So if you walk down a street & see a little medal button, she said to push it & see what you will find behind it! Kind of neat!

The 'traboule' that we looked at was in a part of the city that was settled by Italians and had a very Italian feels to it. There were lots of neat little narrow streets, lined with cafes and shops. I knew this was an area that we needed to come back and check out!

We headed back to the hotel and went grocery shopping down the street. We wandered thru, picking up some fresh bread, cheese, and some other random things. When it came time to check out, we came to realize that they don't have bags... you either bring your own or carry it out. So I had no choice but to carry it out... really glad we only had 2 blocks to walk!

After that, we headed out to dinner - we headed back to the little area w/ the Italian vibe to it and found a restaurant. Luckily they post the menus outside the restaurant so you can find something w/ a good menu in our price range. Alot of the menus has dishes w/ tripes... wasn't sure what those were. Um, they are the intestines of pigs (I believe). I wasn't quite adventurous to eat that, so stayed with a chicken dish that was really yummy.

On the walk back to the hotel, the quote of the day came into play. I am sort of famous for making these sort of dumb comments with absolutely obvious answers. As we were walking back, we kept coming across Lions. I was like - 'um, what is up with all the Lions?' Adrianne looked at me with a 'are you serious look?' and then said - "Um, we are in Lyon? Lyon, Lion? You know?"

So I guess my dumb comment of the week is out of the way.