La Fete des Lumieres

A lit up statue at La Fete des Lumieres!

This weekend I went down to Lyon for La Fete des Lumieres and to see Dianne! Le Fete started to honor Mary(as in the mother of Jesus), who is the patron of Lyon and each December 8th the people in Lyon would put candles in their windows. Now it has become a giant spectacle with about 3 million people visiting the city for each Fete. It started on Wednesday and went through Saturday night. As I have to work, I was only able to make it on Friday night, but Dianne and I made the most of our time.

Friday night we went to a bouchon, which are restaurants that Lyon is famous for. This not being the second time I went to Lyon, nor my first time at a bouchon, I was excited to go to one that was better. According to Dianne, the bouchon that we went to two years ago was the worst one (I believe her, because my meal was disgusting). So at the bouchon I ate chicken livers and sausage made out of something (I think it's best we just forget what was in it), but it was AMAZING! Dessert was even better, praline pie. It's bright red and delicious =)

That's right! I'm eating chicken liver =)

After dinner we walked around and looked at all the different light shows. One of my favorites was where this man is singing into the microphone and you see his face projected onto the facade of a building and it MOVES. I uploaded the video onto my facebook if you want to see it (I highly recommend it).

A picture of the moving face

Saturday, Dianne, Miriam (the Spanish assistant at her school) and I went to one of their professor's house for lunch and it was an interesting way to spend the afternoon. As usual French meals last awhile so it was almost dark when we finished, so it was time for the lights to start! We decided to go to the giant park, because there were fire installations! I love fire so I thought it would be really cool to see, and it was! It looked like a post-apocalyptic world because it was dark, there was fire, smoke, and dead trees.

Post-Apocalyptic World!

Another cool light show was where there was an old church and they projected this movie onto it where they were building the church brick-by-brick and then they fast-forwarded to it's destruction (I also uploaded that video onto my facebook). Afterwards we went to one of Dianne's favorite bars, the drunken parrot.

At the Drunken Parrot!

Unfortunately, Sunday was my last day, but we spent it in a great fashion, we went to a gastronomie fair, where there were many different French food vendors, selling foie gras, jam, champagne, wine, cheese, sausage, pasta, escargot, chocolate, pastries, basically anything you can imagine. You may ask why would you want to go? I will tell you, EVERYONE gave free samples. It was like Costco, but with high class French food. Everyone wanted you to try their food. I did buy some of the best foie gras I've ever eaten, some jam that literally tastes like heaven, and some really good cheese. I think it was a well spent afternoon.

After the amazing food at the fair, I had to go back to Metz, another 6 hour train ride, but I am so glad I was able to see La Fete des Lumieres and Dianne.

Marche de Noel in Strasbourg

In order to get the full "Marche de Noel" experience, Ilaria, Megan, Patrick, and I decided to go to the one in Strasbourg as everyone says that it is the biggest and the best as the one in Metz is a little touristy. So the day started off early with an 8 AM train. Which was good because all of the trains were running late because of the snow, so if we had taken a later train, it would have meant less time in Strasbourg.

The one thing I will say about Strasbourg it is COLD! I was freezing the whole entire time, but the marche de Noel was a lot of fun. There was more to look at (and buy) and the cuisine in Strasbourg is different and definitely helps warm one up =) Basically a lot of cheese and bread, you can't really go wrong with that!

Ilaria and I in front of one of the stands at the Christmas Market

In Strasbourg, there is this Cathedral that is PINK (because it is made out of pink stone) and inside it has this giant clock and at every 12:30PM all these little animitronics come out and do things, unfortunately we were an hour late. But this clock is amazing it can tell you everything about what is happening in the world, it says where all the planets are.

Part of the clock I mentioned

At the end of walking around we (I) decided to go to this bar called "L'academie de bieres" (The Beer Academy), that has just about any beer ever in the bar. It was pretty cool, I ordered some beer from a tap and the glass was rounded on the bottom. It was a little difficult to figure out at first.

And then we had to catch the train, which was late! All in all not a bad way to spend a day =)