OnlyLyon

St. Etienne Train Station

Bellecous

Today was the first day we adventured outside of Yssingeaux. Our first stop was Lyon! We left early Friday morning, March 22 (since we had no class) to catch a bus in town to take us to the St. Etienne train station. As we arrived in Lyon we had to take a metro to get to the district Bellecous. It took us a while to figure out how to pay for a day ticket on the metro. The machine was not accepting our cards, so we had to get Euro coins. Once we figured that out it was smooth sailing until we reached our final destination.

Lyon is the third largest city in France. It was very breathtaking as we came up from underground! There were so many beautiful views and many expensive shopping boutiques. We spent most of the day shopping and exploring the city! We stopped and finally found after searching, looking at maps and asking people in French (who we didn’t understand) where the OL store was. This is the Olympique Lyonnais soccer store. Here is where I got a souvenir for a friend. This store was amazing. It had everything soccer there! We also checked out many pastry shops as we are all pastry students and I bought my first chocolate pastry, grand cru, for only 3,40 Euros. It was so good, if you are a chocolate lover like I am!

Grand Cru

 

Before we left to adventure back home to Yssingeaux, we had our first French dinner all together. We ate at a small restaurant called Café Perl. Luckily for us, they had menus in English, so we did not have to guess what we were ordering. I got pasta with chicken and parmesan sauce. I was thinking the sauce would be red, but it wasn’t. However it was still very good.

As the day was coming to the end, we made our way back to the train station to where our house mother, Ann Marie, picked us up at the Retournac train station. She brought us back to our apartments as our personal taxi.  

Streets of Lyon

Overall today was a great day, and we made it to and from Lyon without getting lost! I am so proud of us all. I am glad I planned and wrote everything down and very thankful my chef gave us directions for the metro!

See you all soon on my next adventure to Le Puy en Velay!