Lyon

Bonjour from Lyon! we spent a little under 24 hours in this cute city, which is the third largest city in France. John read that is is know for it's cuisine thanks to Paul Bousce so he wanted to make sure we had a meal there. (This is also similar to when we had to stop in Bologna because he read that it was the gastronomical city on Italy.)

It was interesting to me how different Lyon felt compared to Paris. It is a big city but even the people looked different to me.

I was pleased that our hotel was cute and in a good location. (yeah to trip advisor and frommers!) the lady at the front desk was also really nice and spoke good English.

The place we had planned to go to dinner was called Brasserie Georges. It is the oldest restaurant in Lyon and seats up to 400 people. It was basically like a huge banquet hall and somewhat fancy with all the waiters in tuxes. Very old school and very neat. They had homemade beer which John loved and I also got champagne as an aperitif (pre meal drink to cleanse your palette). I am staring to love aperitifs. Why don't we have those in the US?

Anyway, John and I started off with two small dished. John got a salad and I got some cheese raviolis. Hey were both really good. My pasta was homemade and reminded me just how close I am to Italy and how I need to turn meal dial to pasta and pizza as much as i can. Seriously...the pasta was melting in my mouth.

For our main dishes, John got a very traditional meal of three different kinds of sausage and sauerkraut. I got a baked fish ball. Ok, so that isn't what it was really called but it was a pureed fish thing that looked like mashed potatoes but had a different consistency. Needless to say it was tasty. After our meal we figured out that the place reminded us of what a German beer/food hall might be like. John's meal was very German.



Despite mosquitos and hotel construction at 8am I actually slept well. The bed was really comfy but I still woke up exhausted.

We headed up on the hill through the old town of Lyon to go to the Notre Dame that was dedicated to Mary. It was really beautiful and the inside was covered in mosaics. It was amazing and remainder me of the cathedrals in Italy. (sorry u forgot to take a photo with my phone.)

Near by the cathedral there were two roman amphitheaters/ruins which they currently use for concerts.

After sit seeing we headed to Le sud which is one of the restaurants owned by Paul Bousce. John got the traditional French dish of seafood soup called boulibase and I got some penne pesto and tomato pasta. Both dishes were really good but I would have enjoyed mine a bit more had I not gotten a migraine. Nice, right? Thanks to a coca-cola it didn't take very long until I started to feel better.

John decided a year ago or so that it would be neat to collect harry potter books from each country we visit. We had already looked in two book stores with no luck but the next shop we went in had one! How cute is this cover?



Now we are on the train to Arles.



It is a smaller town which I am looking forward too. I don't think I am a real big city girl. I am looking forward to taking it easy and sleeping in.

Now that we have traveled south of Paris the weather is beautiful! The sun was actually out today! Yeah!

Another note...we saw a ton of gigantic meringue pieces in a lot of the bakery windows. Is fence known for that? I have no idea.

We had two cappichinos before getting on the train. It was the best one yet. Reminded me of Italy.


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