Tuesday, December 18, 2012

Fete des Lumieres - Lyon

My last exam is finally finished! I now have the time to finally write my blog on the Fete des Lumieres as promised. The Fete des Lumieres is an annual festival in Lyon to celebrate the fact that a long time ago, Lyon was struck with the plague, and nothing they did would get rid of it. Legend has it, that on the 8th of December, the whole city prayed to Marie, a patron saint, and after four days the plague was gone.
So it is a festival to celebrate the saviour of Lyon, and all of the churches and windows are covered in candles and lights, the city squares with beautiful lit up designs, and the streets are lined with strings of shapes and colours. As we walked from the train station into town, the sunset from this flag-lined bridge was only the start of the incredible light shows that we would be seeing over the next few days!


Lyon is only an hour away by train from Grenoble, so we decided that it was a must see, and visited from Thursday night to Saturday night. On the first night, Thursday, we wandered round the inner city, not quite knowing where anything was or what to do until we luckily found a map pointing out all of the key spots to go and see. It wasn't too hard to miss where you should be though - every street you walked down there was a new design, here are some examples:



On our way to finding the place where we were staying for the night –with a friend’s family, we had to walk across a big square, and when we looked up, the surrounding buildings were dotted with beautiful coloured dots, and it looked magical in the darkness. 


As we were watching the dots we realised that actually, they were just a 5min intermission between shows that were going on there, and when the show began to start, we realised just how amazing this light festival was going to be! It was the most spectacular light show that I have ever seen in my life. There were projections onto 3 out of the four surrounding buildings, and it made it look like the building itself was alive with so many different things at once!



They used the building's natural designs to compliment the show, and it worked really well! On one building they even had someone riding an incredibly lifelike looking horse, and when the lights turned off, we realised that it was actually a huge horse carved into the building!



The colours were incredible, I cannot explain the show in words so here is a short video of just some of this show!

After watching the show, we headed to bed, as we knew that we had a big day the next day! We woke up to snow covering the ground, and realised that we had a very cold day ahead! Luckily I had brought my snow boots and umbrella, my friend I was with had to go and buy gumboots after her shoes gave out as soon as we stepped outside! This was the view out our window when we woke up, onto a little square with its own light designs!


We decided to see the city during the day, taking the funicular up the hill to the big church at the top, to get a good view across the city. We were a bit worried that the torrential snow would make visibility a bit of a problem, but the sky held out for the time we were up there, and I don't think that the view turned out too bad!


This was the church, and in front of the church was a poor statue who looked like he’d had enough of being out in that weather!



You can imagine how cold it was! But I think it made the Lyon experience more memorable, walking through the streets of Vieux (old) Lyon was a very picturesque experience.



That night, we made a plan to see as much as possible of the light shows and decorations, and we ended up seeing almost everything! Which was quite an achievement, as many were spread around the city and not just concentrated in the centre. Here are some of the highlights!




This one may need a bit of explaining.. it is called ‘weird elevators’ or something to that effect, and it is projected animals stuck in elevators, it looks really realistic! This elevator looked like it was filled with water, with a huge turtle inside it! 




We walked a wee way to get to these jellyfish in the tree, but it was worth it! Their colours were beautiful, like colourful pearls, and they fluttered in the wind like huge swimming jellyfish. I loved them!








This tiger was part of a massive animal parade that went alongside the river.


Throughout all of the main areas was also a very cool and very French aspect of Christmas -  street vendors selling hot food and hot spiced wine, so of course we had to try some! For dinner that night we got tartiflette, a regional specialty made of creamy potatoes with bacon and grilled cheese on top (essentially a potato bake) and then a vin chaud to wash it down with! 





Later on in the evening when we were getting a bit cold, we saw a churro stand, and while not entirely French, we decided that they looked too good to miss, and they most definitely were! They are a Spanish specialty of sticks of dough, deep fried then coated in sugar. Delicious! Especially on such a cold night.
Here are our churros being cooked, we got them steaming hot!



The next day we went to explore their Christmas market, as any French town that is worth their name must have! I absolutely love markets as I may have already mentioned, so I had a great time at this one! My poor friend probably spent three times as long as she (or any normal person) would've wanted to spend at the market, but oh well I had a great time! This may look like a stall of fruit, but really it is hundreds of tiny beautifully crafted fondant icing pieces, they were truly amazing.



That afternoon some more friends joined us, and we all went out for a very French lunch, I don't think the restaurant knew what to do with itself when we asked for a table for 15! It turned out that was almost half the restaurant! But we all found a seat, and then some of us ordered the 'traditional' Lyon menu items, including cows feet, for a starter, or even cow's head for a main! One friend decided that she would have both which was brave, I told her that I would get a steak and then we could share the cow's head together, as I wanted to try it but we weren't quite sure what it was, and wanted a back up plan if it turned out to be a disaster!
When we got a meal, luckily it avoided disaster status.. narrowly. I'm not quite sure why someone would ever decide that this would be a good idea for a meal, the texture was enough to put anyone off! 
This photo is my friend with the meal, as you can see she is trying her best to smile despite the prospect of eating the cow's head dish in front of her! This picture is included for her dad in Scotland, who I know has been keeping up with my blogs! :)



Lyon is another amazing city I am pleased to say that I have been to, and I am so happy that I could see their festival which they are known all over France for! I know I have been a bit slow on updating this blog due to  the lack of time I've had recently, unfortunately exams have got in the way of my travels! But today I finished my last (ever!) exam, and I have a train leaving for Paris in just over 2 hours, to have a final little adventure before leaving France for good on Sunday. This time I will be going to Eurodisney, and don't really know what to expect, but no doubt there will be an updated blog post on it so look out for that! 

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