The Westovers come to visit

My parents came to visit this weekend! My dad had some business in France and my mom couldn’t handle not visiting us while we’re here, so she jumped on a plane to accompany him. They spent the week in Paris and took the train to Lyon to visit us for the weekend. It was so much fun showing them all around our new town.

A bit o' History
Back in the day, around 43 BC, Lyon was a Gaulish city named Lugdunum - until the Romans triumphantly conquered them. It then became the capital of the Gauls because of all its desirable rivers and such. Since it was a Roman colony, now there are Roman amphitheaters and even a Gallo-Roman museum. We were delighting in Roman history all afternoon.

Roman amphitheater

In the crypt of the Basilica

We also explored some traboules, which are ancient passageways that go through some of the buildings. Even more exciting, during WWII the traboules enabled the locals to escape German Gestapo raids! (Picture on bottom right)

We ate at yet another typical Lyonnais bouchon. The waiter described the special: chicken and vegetables mixed together. That sounded much more normal to me than anything else on the menu (I was getting a little bouchon-ed out) so Nate and I ordered it. The waiter forgot to mention that it was mixed together in gelatin, or more likely, I don’t know the word for “meat in gelatin” in French. It was beautiful and tasted very good, but I couldn’t get over the texture. But doesn’t it look good?

 

Roman bust.  Awesome photo by Nate.