Lyon and Annecy with Mom!

For pics of Mom and my adventure through Lyon and Annecy click this link! http://picasaweb.google.com/mary.a.hollis/LyonAndAnnecyWithMom#

What a packed weekend! Mom and I left Valence on Friday morning to spend the weekend traveling around the region:

Lyon is the second biggest city in France, and despite some rain, we had a great time touring around for 2 days! We arrived just before lunch and did some walking around. The bad weather caught up with us, but thankfully we hopped on tour bus to see the sights right before the worst part came. We then took a boat ride down the Saône river! Thank God for hot nutella crepes. Mom heard that a student of the chef Paul Bocuse had a restaurant there called L'Ouest (West), so I called and we managed to get a 10:00 reservation for dinner! We sat at a 2-person table right by a big open kitchen and got to watch everyone at work! Our dinner and service was wonderful, and at the end of the night we got our picture taken with the chef! Then next day we wandered around Old Lyon and saw traboules, or passageways betweens building or streets, that were first used for the silk trade and were later used to hide Jews by the French resistance during World War II. Lyon has a huge basilica on a hill and many beautiful churches. The old town is all cobblestone streets and little shops, and we had a nice time strolling around. We liked eating at L'Ouest so much, that we decided to try its sister le Sud (South) on Saturday night. It was also good, though I'd recommend l'Ouest more.

Sunday we slept in late and made our way leisurely over to the train station where we hopped on one just in time to ride over to Annecy! This is a gem of a place! It's a small town, but it receives 2 million visitors a year due to its extraordinary beauty, complete with swans. It's on a clear blue lake surrounded by tall and sometimes snow-capped mountains. It's a huge vacation destination in the summer for sunbathing and playing in the lake, and we even saw a few people still skiing in September. The town itself could not be more picturesque with flowers hung every 10 feet and canals running all throughout. It has the nickname of the Venice of France. We spend just one night here, ate more crepes, cruised around the lake, and took another pretty train ride back to Valence!

That is where the adventure began again! Cloé and I went to the train station to pick up our third roommate Nicole! We found her, but at the same time Cloé ran into an old friend who she hadnt seen in years who was in the middle of a travel crisis. He and his two friends from Paris ended up eating dinner at our apartment with Mom, me, Nicole, and Cloé. They were on there way to a smaller town an hour from us to help with an exercise at a nuclear reactor (cross your fingers for us tomorrow).

Tomorrow I'm off with my coordinator, Rosine, and Nicole to take a tour of our schools! When I get back, mom and I are heading to Lyon again for the night so that I can see her to the airport on Wednesday morning for her flight. We're hoping to meet up with my friend Halley Anne, who will be a teaching assistant there this year!