The Excitement Continues!

After my post yesterday, I went to dinner with Kirsten and Taylor who are two of the other girls in my program from Elon. We walked over one of the Saône River bridges to the 2ème arrondissement (2nd district) of Lyon and went to a restaurant called Hippopotamus. It was the first meal that I had gotten since arriving in France and it did not disappoint! What I like that a lot of French restaurants do is a prix fixe menu where you can get multiple courses all for a reasonable price.

This was my first meal since arriving in France! It came with wine and chocolate mousse for dessert!

On day two, I met up with Kirsten and Taylor again to go to a café and then to our registration at our school ESDES. We were really surprised at how hard it was to find an open café at 9:30 in the morning! We eventually found a coffee shop that, surprisingly enough, only sold drinks. After some tea and café au lait, we found a bakery to satisfy our cravings for French pastries. We took our food down to the Saône River to enjoy our pastries and the beautiful scenery.

Here's a picture of me eating my Coeur Chocolat on the Saône River.

After finishing up our breakfast, we went over to ESDES for registration. We found out about some upcoming events like a wine tasting tomorrow night and a scavenger hunt through Vieux Lyon (Old Lyon) on Saturday. Vieux Lyon is the part of the city where my dorm is. Orientation is on Monday, which is when I will get my final class schedule, and classes start next Tuesday. While we were there, we met a couple other students who are in our program including a girl from Vancouver and a girl from Australia.

After getting all registered, we went to lunch and ended up having a traditionally long French lunch that  lasted close to two hours! After lunch, we walked all over the city exploring. we explored the 2ème arrondissement more and came across a really cool structure that looked like a huge bouquet of flowers.

Then we crossed the Rhône River on the other side of the 2ème arrondissement that led us to an area of the city with tons of stores and restaurants. There was a weirdly large number of bridal stores. We passed about 5 within a couple of minutes. Then we went to the Gare (a huge train station that is also a mall). We went to Carrefour, which is like the French version of Walmart, in search of a pillow and towel for me. When I got to the register, the towel that I had thought was €8 was actually €30, which I thought was so crazy! The cheapest full-size towels that I could find were €25, so I'll have to keep shopping around to find one that's more reasonably priced. Another weird experience I had at the mall was that you had to pay just to get into the bathroom!

After the Gare, we made the long trek back to our dorm. With all the walking around the city, it's no wonder French people are so skinny! After a little resting, we decided to go out to dinner at a restaurant in Vieux Lyon near our dorm. Vieux Lyon is so pretty and has so much cool architecture. It seems very French, so it's the perfect place to be staying. I'm so excited to be spending the next four months here!

Below are some more pictures that I've taken so far. For anyone who has a Facebook, I'm adding a lot more pictures from Lyon to FB! (P.S. I'll be adding pictures of my room soon. I just need to finish organizing and hanging up pictures)

"Au Revoir" lunch with my parents at Tsang's before going to the airport

Me with all my luggage getting ready to catch my flight to London, and then from there to Lyon!

The outside of my dorm

The Saône River right next to where my dorm is