Hello all from Switzerland!! So many things are happening, we thought we should divide the weekly into smaller chunks. You may hear from us a few times this week.
When we left you last, we had just finished a long day in Lyon. The next day, we left Lyon to explore some of the area around the city. First, we drove south to the town of Vienne. This town is well known for being a former Gallo-Roman city.
Our first stop was St Maurice Church. It is named after a martyr from the third century. He was a captain of the guard who refused to offer a sacrifice to the Roman gods after his town was taken. So he was beheaded. He is now a saint and his relic at the church is his head. The Catholics here are very strange. It is a very pretty church and had some very impressive Flemish tapestries depicting the life of Saint Maurice, including his beheading. I told you the Catholics are weird.
From the church, we walked to a temple dedicated to Augustus Caesar and his wife, Livie. I can't explain how strange it is to be wandering around a fairly modern town (built several hundred, if not a thousand years ago) and stumble across a roman temple. It seems so out of place. We tried to take some pictures to show the incongruity. We'll see how we did.
From there it was off to Cybele's garden. Here we found the ruins of an aquaduct that filled the baths and the ruins of a temple to the goddess Cybele. There were also ruins of the anterooms where bull sacrifices were performed.
We tried to visit the L'eglise Saint-Pierre. This church has a wonderful museum of archeology in the basement, but because it was Monday, it was closed. Oh well, we consoled ourselves with lunch in a cute little Italian restaurant. The waiter was very funny and entertaining. He kept us laughing the whole meal.
We decided to head north of Lyon at this point to check out the Beaujolais wine region. We stopped at a winery that is also a 15th century chateau. The best thing about this winery is that we had free reign over the castle. We could roam the rooms at will. It wasn't a very big place, but we sure had fun playing. We checked out the chapel, guard room, dungeon (complete with bones that glowed under a black light), and the kitchen. It was a lot of fun. Then we sampled some of the local wine, and Dave and I bought a few bottles.
We asked for a recommendation for dinner from the front desk again. This time we were directed to a really cool brasserie, the Brasserie George. It is the oldest restaurant in Europe. They started serving in 1836! The meal was very good, but we couldn't eat it all. Very large portions for a French restaurant. We started with French onion soup, the tried the sauerkraut and sausage. Every table had a comment card (which is also unusual for a French restaurant), but what could we say about a restaurant that was 170 years old!
The next day we packed up and left Lyon. We were on our way to Geneva! We had a very pleasant drive through the mountains (literally, many tunnels and viaducts, really high ones) and found Geneva with no problem. Getting around in Geneva was another thing. We have been spoiled by the wonderful direction signs in France. Geneva is not so well marked. We drove around for an hour looking for the hotel. We finally had to head back out of town and start allover again. Fortunately, the town has great public transportation, so we parked the car and won't need it again until we leave.
All that driving around made us very late for lunch. We also didn't have any Swiss Francs (they aren't part European Union so no Euros), so our choices were limited. We walked into a restaurant across from the hotel and the owner was willing to serve us at such a weird time AND took credit cards. What was really cool was it was a Lebanese restaurant. Wow! This was an awesome meal. We told him it was the first time we were eating Lebanese food, so he took the menu away and just made us a bunch of samples. It was some of the best food I have ever had. We had rice in grape leaves, lamb prepared three different ways (in bread), sausage, three different salads, and two different kinds of dips for the flat breads. He also made us a fruit juice mix that was spectacular.
From lunch, we decided to walk along the water front and take in the sights. Highlights from this walk included the first protestant church in Geneva, built for the refugees fleeing from France, a clock (in Switzerland?) made from flowers, and the Jet d'eau. This is a jet of water that shoots out of Lake Lemont to a height of 460 ft. It is pretty impressive, not to mention wet. Also, all the way along, are wonderful views of the Alps in the distance.
Well, I will close this edition and fill you in on our adventures again later in the week. Hope all is well. We'll have some Fondue for you.
Amy
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