Not all those who wander are lost...: October 2011

Sunny day by Hôtel Dieu

As I’ve probably mentioned before, I don’t have classes on Wednesday. And after a rainy start to the week, the weather on Wednesday was perfect – sunny with clear skies, though a bit chilly. After sleeping in, I was really tempted to go to the library and use the Internet. But after my post last time about Internet in McDonald’s, my friend, Andrew, told me to grab a camera and go out instead of being cooped inside using the Internet – so I took his advice :)

After grabbing some maps from the tourist office in Bellecour, I went on my way to explore Croix Rousse again, just like I’d said I would from the last time. It was kind of like my trip to the Mediterranean where I just walked and lost track of the time, though I think I walked around for about 3 hours. I just kind of wandered around, walked down streets that looked interesting, and took lots of pictures. I have to say it turned out to be a pretty awesome day without being cooped up inside using the Internet. :P (Thanks for the advice, Andrew :D)

care package! :D (thanks Ling! <3)

yayy! soo exciting :D

I need to go to bakeries more often..

grillé du pommes

was talking about korean food with friends and started craving it. SO, this was my first time making kimchi jigae and it turned out really well! :D yayy for learning to cook! :)

year round carnival/fairgrounds in croix rousse

instead of getting plushies, you can get ipods, iphones and ipads now? :P

my route - starting at the bottom right and following the green arrows up :P

hotel dieu

chamber of commerce on the right, monoprix (kind of a target/costco store) and h&m are located in the reflective building on the left

chamber of commerce

chamber of commerce again - just too pretty :P

church of st bonaventure

amazing details!

love the stained glass windows in this church! so pretty

love the candles too :)

prettyy

chandeliers!

such a pretty church!

and the sun just made it even better

random staircase i found while wandering around :)

the theme of this post is stairs

there were two staircases like this, one after another, that i took..

and more stairs..

love the lamps :)

chimneys!

stairsss

a bench in one of my favorite places in lyon - thanks to my adventure :)

<3 this view

perfect day!

MORE stairs...

seriously never-ending in croix rousse..

beautiful park in croix rousse that's all located on the side of a hill

a 'fort' overlooking the rhône river

view from above

cute graffiti :)

there were some people filming and they probably were really annoyed that i kept walking through back and forth through their film cause i had no idea where i was going haha

i wouldn't mind living here :)

the architecture never ceases to amaze me here :)

panorama from above

the end! :) until next time! xx

First of all...one of my favorite pictures from my trip this weekend ;)

my favorite picture - chateau d'eau

My only class on Friday was cancelled, so on a whim, I decided to travel a little bit! (I decided on Monday or Tuesday to leave on Friday :P). After deciding between Montpellier and Paris, I finally chose Montpellier because apparently the weather was supposed to be nice (didn’t really happen…)! To save money, I used couch surfing (covoiturage) and couch-surfed! In the end, I only spent about 50€ for the weekend, the same amount as a one-way train ticket to Montpellier! :D

Esplanade de l'Europe

View from across the water

I was a little nervous about doing car sharing at first, but it ended up totally fine! It was a pretty cold morning on Friday and the driver was late, but I found another girl that was also going in the car who was really nice and told me that if the couch surfing didn’t work out, I could always stay with her or a friend. There were four of us in the car, and the driver drove pretty quickly so we ended up making it only 2.5 hours instead of the anticipated 3.5, as advertised by Google maps.

fountains by corum, where the congress is located

walking towards the city center

street markets

After going a little bit further than I actually needed to, I found my couch surfing host’s place. Then, we went around on a walking tour of Montpellier, which is actually a pretty small city so it didn’t take us too long! I think I’ve fallen in love with it, since it’s so pretty, and especially since it’s so close to the Mediterranean! I wouldn’t mind living there at all! My host was from Malaysia and made some bak kut teh, which was delicious and probably the best meal I’ve had since arriving in France, since I’ve been craving my mom’s food for the longest time!

in front of the opera house

the fountain of the three graces

three graces in front of the opera house

tour de la babote - a tower from the 13th century that used to be part of the wall surrounding montpellier that's now used for astronomy

loving the tromp l'oeils! :D looks like it's actually part of the building huh?

i liked this scoreboard :) unfortunately, france lost to new zealand in the world cup finals 8-7 :( although, i honestly have no idea how rugby works...

eglise saint-roch

the tromp l'oeil across the tiny place from the church - can you tell which windows are actually real and which ones are painted? :)

by the church

cute little road thingys :P

prefecture

the arc de triomphe of montpellier :P

a little boulangerie i stopped at on the way to arc de triomphe

brioche de pralines :)

palais de justice

arc de triomphe with the chateau d'eau (castle of water) in the back

a crucifix near the park

louis the 14th and the chateau d'eau

louis the 14th

aqueduct - how do these even work?!

arc de triomphe again

faculty of medicine and cathedrale saint-pierre

faculty of medicine from 1221!

cathedrale saint-pierre - amazingg

cathedrale saint-pierre again

inside the cathedrale

one of the doors of the cathedrale

mm bak kut teh :D

so yummy!

On Saturday, my host was sick, so I took a bus by myself to one of the beach towns by the Mediterranean. It was really cloudy and looked like it was about to storm, but it was the only time I could go, so I made the most of it. I was really thankful that it didn’t rain at all! I ended up walking along the beach for a couple hours, honestly, I kind of lost track of time! It was perfect! :)

polygone shopping mall

some statue in a fountain..

all the buildings from the polygone shopping mall to the end were symmetrical across this path

media center on the left side, pool on the right

lots of greek stuff in montpellier for some reason..

olympic pool of antigone - anyone read antigone by Sophocles? tragic name...

place de l'europe

statue in front of hotel de region

had to take a pic of this :P

yet another pic of the hotel de region

random old stuff in the middle of a roundabout

Sunday morning, I took the tram to IKEA to meet the driver who was taking me back to Lyon. Together with another girl, we made our way back to Lyon in about 3 hours. They didn’t speak English, so the whole time we only spoke French, which was awesome practice! I was feeling pretty sick on the way to Montpellier, so I hadn’t talked much. But this ride back to Lyon was really good! :)

huge outdoor shopping mall that reminded me a bit of home

odysseum shopping center

aquarium

greek seat/fountain thingy by the aquarium

got lost and walked through this dark, empty garage - it was scaryyy

look how dark it was!

it's cause it was sunday and everythingg was closed.. so scary

ikea!! was sad it was closed :(

Unfortunately, I’m back in classes again. The rest of Lyon, and I guess the region of Rhône-Alpes, according to my driver back to Lyon, is on vacation for the next week or two. But for some reason, the faculty of law at my university doesn’t have a break, so we have classes with no break until Christmas break :( Pretty unfair, if you ask me, which is ironic, because it’s the study of the justice system. Hmm…anyway… While the rest of my friends are off to Ireland, Italy, etc., my law friends and I are stuck in classes :(