From Long Island to Strasbourg: A Weekend in Lyon Part I

I've heard that everyone has some sort of disaster story when it comes to traveling and I'm hoping this was ours: Saturday morning four friends and I were planning to leave for Lyon France for the weekend. Four of us made it... we kind of left Sarah behind. Ironically, she was at the train station before us, was the one that completely knew where she had to be, and was the one who did not sprint down the streets of Strasbourg, get off at the wrong tram stop, then take another wrong tram. But when we called saying we didn't know where to go, she got off the train to meet us, we didn't know she had, so we got on the train. Long story short, Sarah was able to get another train a few hours later and by 2 pm we were reunited in Lyon.

The city is amazing in that the natural beauty of the hills and rivers meets the mad made beauty of the cathedrals and statues. I'll walk you through the trip in many, many photos.

While Liv, Kathleen, Jen, and I waited for Sarah to meet us (as if nothing else could go wrong for her, the train she took brought her to the airport instead of the train station), we checked out a market and got some fruit for a snack.

From right to left: Jen, Kathleen, Liv

Then, we walked around Le Parc de la Tête d'Or, which has a zoo and botanical garden. It was so nice to see fields of grass and flowers again; being in a city has made me miss that.

Kathleen is cute.

Yay! This is when we finally got Sarah back and started to explore the center of Lyon. Here are some pictures of the centre-ville.

I'd be lying if I denied that one of reasons we chose Lyon for our weekend trip was for the food. Liv's host mother told us to look out for restaurants that say "Bouchon Lyonnaise," which are a type of restaurant that serve traditional Lyonnaise cuisine, which is often very heavy and revolves around meat. We all had a "tarte" dish which had different ingredients melted over bread. Mine was tomato and mozzarella cheese. For dessert, we had cooked apples with a chocolate-caramel sauce. We were right to come to Lyon for the food.