This post was coming a long time ago, but sadly, life interrupted.

At the beginning of this week Mary, Mary and I returned from Italy, land of cheese and lots and lots of tourists. The vacation there was great, the traveling there was incredibly stressful, and all in all I think I've recovered enough to share some cool pictures.

Here's what we did:
Wednesday 18/02:
-Uffizi Museum, the highlights of which included Botteceli's Birth of Venus and the beautiful view of the Arno River from the building, which once housed the Medici offices.



-Boboli Gardens at the Palazzo Pitti, which were beautiful. We had very good weather for the entire trip.


-Trips into the open-air market and past the Duomo, stopping to view the Paradise Doors on the Baptistry.


Thursday 19/02:
-Accademia Museum to see Michaelangelo's David (enormous!) and similarly famous art.
-San Lorenzo cathedral
-Santa Maria Novella cathedral
-Climb of the Duomo (up to the top of the dome for a lovely panorama of Florence), and views of the Duomo interior at various heights.



Oh look there I am! Thanks to Doc for taking this photo.

Friday 20/02:
-Day trip to Siena, where we climbed the Torre del Mangia for amazing views of the Tuscan countryside




-Visited the Civic Museum, where I got excessively excited about the Allegory of Good and Bad Government
-Went to the beautiful, striped marble Duomo, possibly my favorite church of all.



Saturday 21/02:
-Visit to the Museo de San Marco, which was pretty cool, and then a return trip to the Palazzo Pitti to see the Argenti and the Costume museums, which were actually not that exciting.

This is for you, snail pony!

-Last minute church visits: Santa Croce and San Spirito. We were pretty churched out by the end of this trip.




Sunday 22/02:
-Part one of our homecoming adventure, mostly just traveling but we spent some of the afternoon in Pisa. Hooray for leaning towers!


And finally, I love this picture, but after so long I have to admit I have absolutely no idea what it actually is.

One day the sun will come out

Hello again, faithful blog followers! Tomorrow the Marys and I leave for Firenze, therefore, an update seemed to be in order, n'est-ce pas?

My pictures this week are mostly from my recent visit to Parc de la Tête d'Or, the Park of the Golden Head. Legend has it that in the park, an enormous expanse of land containing a lake, an island, a zoo, a cinema, the contemporary art museum, and botanical gardens, there was a buried golden head of Christ. Searches for the head immediately after the establishment of the park (1856, making it exactly contemporaneous with New York's Central Park) proved inconclusive, but the name stuck.

I visited the Parc on a very nice day -- the weather might have been as warm as 50 Fahrenheit! My forearms were exposed to French sunlight for the first time. I followed the paved promenade around the lake, journeyed through a short tunnel to the island in the lake, explored the upper reaches of the Parc, passed through the zoo and the botanical gardens, got lost trying to find the Orangerie, and wandered by the deer field on my way back. The adventure took several hours, all told, but the pictures were pretty worth it. I'll definitely be heading back there in the spring when the weather is nicer.

In other news, the professors are still on strike and little of note has been going on in terms of classes. Since we are now on winter break (break from what, I ask you?), the hope is that classes will resume on Monday the 23rd. If this is the case, the two makeup weeks built into the semester calendar before exams will suffice to make up the missed classes, and the calendar will be unchanged. However, if the strike continues, other makeup steps will have to be taken, although no one seems prepared to identify those. I am not worried, since there's really nothing I can do.

I am, however, very happy to be going to Italy tomorrow, as I'm sure there will be lots to see and do in Florence (and Pisa and Siena, for that matter). Look for pictures around this time next week, but not too many, since my various attempts to get a larger memory card have thus far been unsuccessful. I need a new camera.

Well, for now, enjoy the sunny eye candy.


Huge student manifestation in Place de Terreaux. The banner is (I think) expressing a general solidarity with the professors who are striking.


Geese wandering around on the green, occasionally threatening small dogs.


One of the (manmade) tributaries to the lake: detail of submerged leaves.


Shot of the World War I monument on the island in the lake. The names of the approximately 10,000 Lyonnais soldiers who died during the war are inscribed on granite tablets around the base of a large statue.


Looking back across the lake from the island/memorial.


Looking down the garden plots, which just made me long for spring.


In the gardens: something is blooming!


In the gardens again: lovely laid-out English style hedgework.


And finally we meet the deer!


Leaving the Parc: long shot in late afternoon.

So if you're not going to school, you're basically just living in France?

Due to the extreme popularity of Squidgirl (not), more updates have been declare necessary.

Well, I don't have anything to do today, in any case. My roommates, ML and Doc, and I bought our TGV tickets to Paris today! We are taking the train to Paris on the 17th, flying from Paris to Pisa that night, and taking the 00:20 (that's twenty after midnight for my American friends) bus to the center of Florence. We're staying five nights in Florence, then taking the bus back to Pisa and passing most of Sunday there before our flight back to Paris that evening. The only downside is that we get into Paris at 21:30, too late to catch a train back to Lyon, so we will have to stay the night in a hotel or hostel close by. But none of us have Monday morning classes so that should be okay.

It's not as expensive as it sounds, I promise.

Other journeys, you ask? Well, I have a friend in Paris this semester, so I am trying to find out if I can stay with her. ML and I both have an interest in going to Geneva, which is only an hour train ride from here, so perhaps for a weekend, as neither of us have Friday classes. We're talking about going to Siena for a day from Florence while we're there, as it's close, but there is so much to do/see in Florence herself that I'm not sure we'll make it there.

I am also seriously considering looking into flights / trains to London. Whether I end up going will of course depend on how expensive things are, but it's a thought.

Travel is interesting, because there's not a whole lot going on in Lyon for us right now. The strike has continued unstopped since last Thursday, meaning it's been a week since I've been in classes, which is mostly just tedious for me. We hope things are coming to a resolution tomorrow.

Mostly I've been making a lot of food (and running for exercise, fear not). France is particularly helpful for that.


Memorial building on a plaque in Vieux Lyon. The text reads: In this house lived Victoria Nicollet, who died during deportation to Ravensbruck in 1945, a victim of fascism. In going by, remember her.


Man holding a flare at one of the grève manifestations, Thursday last.


Kayakers in the Rhône, midmorning.


Looking south from Pont Lafayette on the Rhône river.


Flags on Pont Lafayette at sunset.


Looking north on the river, this time.


The grand roue, or Ferris wheel, in Place Bellecour. No, I haven't ridden it.


Sunday afternoon meal from the market. From left: Bread and jam and a pain au chocolat (croissant with chocolate filling), basmati rice and roasted vegetables, instant cappuccino, apple slices and two kinds of cheese (vache and chèvre), and a mixture of coke and segrum's lime tonic water.


Yours truly, wearing my new beret in the kitchen mirror.

Take these chances, place them in a box until a quieter time

This past week or so we have been very busy sitting in on Political Institute classes. I think I am taking at least two (Political History of France and Globalization and Sovereignty) and possibly two more after I sit them on Tuesday (Image and Event and Philosophy, Social Science, and Cinema). Last Tuesday we had a grève, a strike, of the professors, so there were no classes that day. Apparently there is another one on Thursday. They are protesting the implementation of changes in the teaching process that they feel are not sound/productive/in agreement with how material should be taught.

I am also going to be looking into the literature courses that I will be taking. I probably only need one or two but I circled four. I have to go to the department office tomorrow to establish what times the courses might be at.

In other news, the internet has returned (hopefully for good), the television is streaming French digital cable, and the fixed phone line is free outgoing calls to the States / French fixed lines and free incoming calls. Email me (asl3w at virginia) if you would like the new phone number, or we can just Skype.

Now, pictures. I just discovered that if you click on a thumbnail, it takes you to a full size view of the image. Try that!


Screenshot of the crowds in DC for inauguration, and CNN telling us the wind chill is 17 Fahrenheit.


Random window display along the Saône river.


Passerelle (I forget which one) over the Saône.


You can see the Alps on a clear day! We posited that the big one might be Mont Blanc, the tallest mountain in Europe (excluding the Ural Mountains).


A trompe à l'oeil, or trick of the eye (mirage) in Presqu'île. The whole block was covered in these realistic paintings -- I chose this one because the lion is one of the symbols of Lyon.


Graffiti reading "love our children," and me being excited about it.


Galette au fromage et tomate, a cheese and tomato buckwheat crêpe for Saturday lunch.


Crêpe beurre-sucre (butter and sugar) for a lunchtime dessert.


Pont de Lafayette at night.

warm apartment > rainy lyonnais night

Squid's got internet at home (although it didn't come without a fight), and a pretty boring night ahead of her, so how about some pictures? As one of my roommates just said, I'm on the struggle bus, meaning that things are actually kind of difficult right now. But on to the pictures!


View of our apartment from the front door.


Apartment detail: we call it the sea urchin light.


View of the same room, this time from the door to my room.


View of our comparatively huge kitchen. Note the washing machine instead of a dishwasher! We don't have a microwave, either.


Rue de la Fromagerie (this one's for you, B)!


Schedule of the Coemedia Cinema with me in the background taking the picture.


The Olly Boutique, a sex toy store (oh France, how I love you).


Lying in bed reading during a beautiful afternoon. I put the camera down on my chest to take this one.

Well, that's it for now. My two roommates are supposedly going to a costume party later, which I politely declined, because I hate costume parties and I also hate paying ten euros for a party that I probably won't enjoy. I guess you could say I'm not your typical college student.