This Saturday we finally made it to the Parc de la Tete d'Or, which is huge and amazing. In addition to being free, it has an outdoor zoo. We just stumbled across first some deer, then elephants, a giraffe, monkeys, a lemur, and more. There's also a lake with boats and canoes that the public can rent, two and four person bikes for rent, a tiny train that goes around the park during the day, ice cream stands, a puppet theater, and a merry-go-round, aside from lots of green space. Of course no weekend outing is complete without a pastry, so the latest is a Baba Chantilly. It wasn't the best, but was worth the try. It's a spongy cake soaked in some kind of alcohol with "cream," which is more like vanilla pudding on top. The first picture is a balloon advertising the Lyon Biennale of art, which is going on right now. We shamefully have not made any trips yet to see the exhibits.

Yesterday after classes ended I decided to stop by a patisserie by Place Bellecour again because it has such a great atmosphere and a seemingly unending variety of really fancy pastries. So I bought a Meringue d'Ete and a regular cookie and thought I would surprise Tom with both of them. However, we also have a really great patisserie two blocks away at the end of our neighborhood. When Tom got home, he also came with two giant shortbread cookies, one with lemon inside and the other with strawberry. If you buy a pastry, there's no point in saving it for the next day because you can just buy another that's more fresh. The only solution was to eat all of it, so we had a big Fat Fest and shared three cookies and the Meringue d'Ete.

The Meringue d'Ete is probably one of the top 5 I've tried since we've been here. There's a layer of meringue with nuts in it, then a layer of some kind of fruit that we don't have in the US, and finally a layer of sweet pistachio cream with more nuts sprinkled on top. It was amazing.

We finally have internet at our apartment, so now I can start posting all of the photos of the wonderful pastries I've tried, along with photos of everything else.

The last picture is of my university, Lumiere 2. The rest of the pictures are what I do and think about for a large portion of the rest of the day, when I'm not in class. PASTRIES!

The first was horrible. It looked like Neapolitan ice cream from a distance because it's brown, white, pink, and sparkly, but once I was close enough to see the reality, it was too late. I had already bought it. There's a big nasty piece of dried fruit stuck on some almond paste with some sugar. The next three were wonderful: une tarte pistache, un petit gateau chocolat, and un petit "cochon" gateau.

Random Goodness

Here we have another random happening at the Opera. I passed by this square and saw this band of kids with the random breakdancers and Tom walked through the Place Sathonay, right below our street, where there was a random Samba band playing with women dressed in elaborate costumes dancing. There's always something cool happening.

I forgot to add in the last entry that one of the hilarious things about Lyon is that at these skate parks where the tough kids hang out and practice, they also rollerblade. The last time I had rollerblades was when I was in 3rd grade and they were hot pink. I only think of the 80s and early 90s when it comes to rollerblades. Of course they're considered cool and tough here.

La Vie Quotidienne

I couldn't resist one more view of Fourvière and the tower. So one of the cool things about Lyon is that rather than pushing what we might call "counter culture" out to the margins of society, they include skate parks right in the center of everything and allow skateboarders to skate next to the Opéra, a big area where people congregate at all times of the day. The city doesn't see it as disrupting anything or destroying anything. It actually draws more people outside to sit and watch, photographers sit around and photograph them, business men and women hang around. It just isn't a big deal and the kids aren't seen as scum. They also allow graffiti in the skate parks, so they have a sort of local flair.
On a side note, the photo with the trees lining the river is a walk I take almost every day and the photo doesn't do the view justice. It's a great part of the day, though.

So we've been in our apartment now maybe two weeks. The two pictures above are pretty much what it looked like when we moved in. Our first dinner was more like an appéro, with a shipping box for our dining room table. It took about a week for us to acquire four chairs and two tables, so now we have a legitimate dinner table and some real groceries (an entire drawer full of different cheeses). Tom made me delete the picture of him on the other side of the "table." But even without much, our apartment has the hugely redeaming quality of the amazing view, which you can see in the top photos. In fact, I'm becoming a little obsessed with the view and how the cityscape changes all the time with the weather. I'll probably be posting too many photos of it.

Local Flavor

We still don't have our internet box setup, so I'm at a laundromat interneting and I forgot my photos at the apartment :-( Photos will have to wait.
We're getting to know some of the local characters, from a distance anyway. We've encountered one man several times who is always doing the same thing. He's dressed in leather, real hard-core looking, on a motorcycle with handles that come almost above his head. It looks pretty dangerous and a little obnoxious, but you know how it goes. Gotta keep it real. So every time we see him he's doing the same thing - riding around the same few blocks. Just riding, showing off.
We also encountered another woman who looks like a high-energy trophy wife. She's probably in her 50s, super tan, super skinny, always jogging while talking on her headpiece cell phone, seemingly talking to the air. Jogging while talking is a hard thing to do. That's big business.
And that's the news for today!