Apology and Lyon

Firstly an apology - Aylin I was reading your post and in trying to leave a comment I seem to have erased your message... but how is that possible?? Can you retrieve it? I will now stick to doing only the most basic things when using the page in French! Terribly sorry about that but I will comment here - the photo of you is good with a lovely smile! Your new look is quite a departure but I think it works, although you look a bit pissed off in the photo on your blog!

Ok, now for the actual entry. We spent 6 days down in the region quite close to the Italian and Swiss borders, somewhere I had never been before, allowing me to maintain my desire to go to at least one new area everytime I leave Australia! We arrived in Lyon on Valentines day, having travelled the 500+ kilometres from Aurore's village in a combination of car, RER train and the fabulously fast but expensive TGV. Aurore's sister was away so we were lucky enough to have the use of her apartment for our three nights. We celebrated Valentines by going to a Lyonnaise restaurant - the local cuisine is big on offal but was surprisingly good and hearty, and also featured an interesting salad with a poached egg on top! The highlights of our time in Lyon were seeing the great art deco opera house, going to the incredibly gaudy basilica on a hill overlooking the city, seeing the film The Last King of Scotland (about Idi Amin, excellent, and Forest Whitaker actually deserved his academy award), seeing the two Roman theatres and the extensive remains behind them, and mostly visiting Vienne. About a 20 minute train ride from Lyon, this had been a major Roman and early medieval city, and has the most extensive Roman remains in France, certainly the most I have seen anywhere outside of Italy, as well as other delights such as an extant 5/6 century church! The town was full of little windy cobbled streets, dotted with Roman ruins, churches, and old buildings. I guess the big four Roman sites were the 13000 seat theatre which is still used, the fantastic temple of Augustus and Livia, the remains of the Forum, and the archaeological park/museum where you can wander amongst the remains of the former crafts area - see the photo of the toilets... I love the early medieval period, but when you look at Roman ruins you realise just what a backwards step it was in many ways, and how ordinary they were as builders!!

After Lyon we took a couple of trains to visit Aurore's mother, who really lives in a rural area - 2km from the house to the mail box! This meant there were lovely views and walks to be had (thankfully the weather was excellent), but little else. This was rectified by Aurore driving us to Cirque de Baume, an amazing natural cul de sac ringed by high cliffs and terminating in a very impressive multi level waterfall, with the water gushing out of the side of one of the cliffs.