mouth full of it...

almost in...

Again, I was trying to preserve our dignity, but apparently it's useless. These pics were going to end up on the internet anyway. So here's the tiramisu and of course us eating it.

Salon du Chocolat

the giant tiramisu!

Above are Davide, Chiara, and another girl who I think works at the Italian Chamber of Commerce.

a giant chocolate bear!

This past weekend was the Salon du Chocolat, where some chefs made the biggest tiramisu in the world, officially certified by the Guinness Book. Our friends Chiara and Davide were there representing the Italian Chamber of Commerce, so they gave us free tickets, which was great. We were a little surprised because we thought there would be lots of free samples of chocolate since you have to pay admissions, but it was just a lot of chocolate vendors selling their chocolates. Some were inventive, like the photo above of a man who had bouquets of flowers made of candy and chocolate. They also had a demonstration going on of a man making paintings out of chocolate, but we were not so impressed by it. His paintings just looked like abstract art. The giant tiramasu was worth seeing and tasting, though. Hooray for chocolate!

les Traboules de la Croix-Rousse

We finally took a walk through some of the traboules in our area by Croix-Paquet and the Croix-Rousse, which is the northern limit of Lyon. Traboules are pedestrian passages that go through buildings and across streets through different parts of the city. They're highlighted in the tourist guides because they look like regular doors to buildings, but if you know which doors to open, they turn into long walkways through courtyards, apartment buildings, and commercial buildings to different parts of the city. Today they're often marked with a little symbol, I think a lion face, but not all are still open to the public. In our area they were originally built for silkworkers so that they could get down to the Presqu'ile, central Lyon, in a straight line without winding down the roads. They were also used in the resistance against the German occupation in World War II. There's a picture above of a giant concrete staircase that's one of the more famous traboules in our area.

There are other markings for tourists all over our neighborhood and north of us, but we haven't yet figured out what they mean. One is an arm making a fist, another is some sort of flower, another is a lion head, and more rare is two eyes.

The last picture in the list is our apartment building. It was one of the original buildings for the silkworkers, which was the main industry for northern Lyon in the 19th century.

First Day Trip

Here is their regional dish, galette, which is different from the galette in Brittany. From a distance it just looks like a pizza, but we ordered it for lunch and it's a big piece of sweet crispy bread with sugar sprinkled on top. That's it! It tastes like a sugar cookie. So our lunch was a pastry and cider. But when in Rome...

This past weekend we finally got out of the less than 10 square miles in which we've been living our lives since August. We headed out to Perouges, a well-preserved medieval town about 15 minutes outside of Lyon by train. It was our first glimpse of the French countryside since we've been here and it felt great to remember that there is a countryside. Here is a basic idea of the town layout: there's one road that runs in a circle with a fortification wall around it, then all other roads lead into the center of the circle. This central circle has two restaurants, one tourist shop, and a tree that was planted during the Revolution of 1792 to commemorate it. The fact that the tree is still there makes it pretty unique to see, also because its branches are being supported by poles that look like candy canes. Even though the town is extremely small and can be seen within 2 hours or less, it's well worth the trip out. I should also note that because we went on a Monday and this is France, it was totally dead. All of the shops were closed and there were no tourists, which is why there are hardly any people in the photos.