“Oh La La!” Pretty much my reaction to everything I see here, but imagine it in a try-hard French accent. Yup that’s me! Saturday morning we woke up and decided to head to the farmer’s market for breakfast. Side note – I have lived in Napa for a long time and believed that we had an amazing food culture and new how to really do things, especially farmers markets. Nope. Lyon definitely takes the cake on that one. Throughout the city you can find markets on everyday of the week with the most amazing produce you have ever seen. Everything is also extremely cheap! Let me put it into perspective. For an entire plate of figs, you have to hand over two euros. These are not small plates by any means either. Anyways, after walking through and looking over everything, I settled on a tomato and goat cheese tart, as well as a chocolate croissant. Cue the drooling, as I am still thinking about them. So good! After, we walked along the river for a while and people watched (second favorite activity here, beat by eating). In the evening, we met up with some of Kasia’s friends to cook dinner together. On the menu was veggie stew with copious amounts of baguette, cheese, and wine. We pretty much rolled ourselves down the hill back to Kasia’s apartment afterwards. I ended up staying awake till almost two in the morning and felt confused until I remembered that jet lag is an actual thing. The next morning? You can probably guess…farmers market! This one was atop a giant hill that houses the most adorable neighborhood. The market itself was packed and never-ending. One thing that caught my eye was the many vendors roasting chickens. Holy moly the smell alone sent me into withdrawals of Thanksgiving and roaring fires and all that fall stuff. We decided to pass as it was only breakfast time and didn’t feel like lugging an entire chicken back to the apartment, but resigned ourselves to trying it some other time. I might come back simply for the roast chickens. I ended up with three croissants somehow: an almond, a chocolate, and a plain one. I added a latte and felt very satisfied with my last breakfast in France. We walked around the neighborhood for a bit after and explored. I’ve noticed that the people here seem content with just hanging out and enjoying their days. No one was rushing around and everyone seemed so happy. Back home I usually try to have things planned and fill up my days, which sometimes leaves me feeling stressed out. I decided to make it my goal to learn the art of doing nothing, or as the Italians call it, farniente (I think). The highlight of the day was visiting the Museum of Fine Arts. It was located right near Kasia’s apartment and luckily for us, had free entry all weekend! As we are college students trying to watch our budget, this made it more appealing. The art of course was beautiful and there was much to see. We saw sculptures from ancient Egyptian, Greek, Roman, and Islamic times. There were even mummified body parts! So cool. There was also a large collection of paintings from different periods and many different artists. I recognized the Degas and Monet ones, but everything else was pretty new to me. Towards the end to entertain ourselves, Kasia and I started making up names for the different paintings we saw, giving them new and hilarious meanings. I think we received a few funny looks as we were cracking up but it was too funny for us to care. Unfortunately after that my camera battery died and I had forgotten to pack my spare one, which was a bummer because we happened across the “World Skate-Cross Series”. Apparently a huge deal! There was a race, as well as a course with jumps and ramps which we got to watch the contestants navigate. It was so cool to see people racing around on rollerblades of all things. We headed back to the apartment when it finished because our feet were tired and resting seemed like an optimal idea. I fly to Granada tomorrow and am a bit nervous as I can only hope that it is as amazing as Lyon has been. I’m pretty sure it will be, but I’ll let you know!
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Amani P.Last fall I took off for a year abroad. Now I'm back in the states, trying to figure out this crazy thing we call life! Archives
February 2017
Categories |