Balades et Bouchons
- Alexa Nickandros
- Oct 27, 2018
- 4 min read
Hi all, Winslow here! The three of us are having quite a lazy day here in Bourges after we opted to return home yesterday from eastern France. We had been out and about for a week and came home for a restart!
Our journey started a couple hours south in Clermont-Ferrand, where the young one had heard there was great hiking spots. In fact it is bordered by the volcanic Chaîne des Puys mountains which includes the volcano Puy-de-Dôme. It took us an hour and a half to get to the summit (an altitude of 1465 meters) on a path that went from woods, to open air, to an ascension of stairs, to a paved drive. There you can find a snack bar, gift shop, picnic area, train station, the ruins of the ancient temple of Mercury, a television tower, a beautiful panoramic view, and chilly air. My travel companions were happy to take the train down, and managed to do so without tickets.
A remarkable feature of the student city Clermont-Ferrand is its Cathédrale Notre-Dame-de-l'Assomption made of lava stone. It stands out drastically when looking over the city-scape, but actually when seen up close many tourists note how dirty it appears to be.
I did not take this photo
Here the boyfriend tentatively boasts his "new" jacket in front of the cathedral before entering. This was actually the first cathedral that me and the young one have been in where someone was playing the organ! Mystifying and eerie. One of our top cathedrals for sure.
Unfortunately in the late evening I was left in an apartment quite a ways from downtown which had wires protruding from the ceiling and walls and minimal furnishings. I felt bad that the two had to sleep on a cot and a small mattress on the floor, but the young ones didn't care as long as they had a roof over their heads! They went out with one of these so-called "hosts" that they tend to find on their cellphones somehow, one night to a small gathering of the host's friends, and the other night to a restaurant that served local specialties found in the central square Place Jaude.
A "host" and his friend at a restaurant in Place Jaude Local cheese and potato mixture called Truffade
The road took us next to a city I've been once before, Lyon (read about my last experience here).
Such fun I had here, as it was my first time on a bike! We went from Vieux-Lyon to regular Lyon, across this bridge and that, but mostly just along the river Saône.
For the second time the young one and I got to see the gorgeous Basilique Notre-Dame de Fourvière! We took photos overlooking the city and I swear the boyfriend was going to drop me...
Even though Vieux-Lyon is the touristic part of the city it remains a part of the authentic Lyonnais culture. There you can find many bouchons lyonnais, restaurants that serve typical food from Lyon. The French word "bouchon" doesn't just mean "plug or stopper" but is an old word for "hay or straw". It was a place where in the old days folks would stop for a bite to eat and for someone to take care of their horse. "Bouchon" is also a term of endearment that the young one has begun to use...
This is the bouchon that our beloved couple dined at in the old town. It was soup or salad to start, then a main course of sausage or fish, and a sweet or local cheese to finish off.
A part of the young one's second experience in Lyon was the night life. I don't enjoy going out because I don't care to get my fur sticky with alcohol drippings or to listen to outdated pop music, but the young one, the boyfriend, and another host were out quite late the second night doing exactly that. They all told me about the Pentes de la Croix-Rousse and the diverse cultural mix at the club. This part of the city is especially young and the streets boom with life and kebab shops.
Two days isn't a very long time to be in one city, but in a place like Lyon, not even a month would be enough! In this way we made peace with leaving so soon, and onto a city that's been on our list for quite some time.
Annecy is charming, exquisite, and a great place for a traveler or a bear to take a break and relax. Though it is a bit expensive, you can spend the whole day just walking around and admiring the lake and its mountains. That is exactly what we did, and with some new friends too, who happen to be in France for the same reason the young one is!
We were in Annecy long enough to establish a daily routine: get out of our hostel bed, sit outside with a lake view and listen to the boyfriend play his ukelele, walk around all day, go to the market for food to cook up for dinner, march up the steep hill back to the hostel, and stay in for the night. On our first full day we attempted to walk around the whole lake. In the end we turned around a quarter of the way through because it was about to take us 9 more hours! On the second day we hiked again, part of the way up Mount Veyrier, just to the first viewpoint.
The young one told me how she longed to be on a boat out on the water, or to be able to sail, or learn to windsurf. These are all things we noticed people doing on Lac Annecy. Another thing we noticed, on a different note, is how low the water is.
Most of France has been in a drought for a few months now, and the effects of that can really be seen in a place like Annecy, where water is supposed to flow freely in canals through the city.
Without being on a snow-tipped peak, what more can you ask for? After saying our goodbyes to the Alps we crossed some vast hillside towns back to a flat Central France to start again.
Until our next adventure,
Winslow
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