While Lyon is such a great city to live in, taking day trips during the weekend are so easy and necessary to understand the area better.

In the past week, I have taken two day trips. The first was last Monday to a VERY small medieval town called Pérouges, which is just 20 minutes north of the city. The second was on Saturday to another medieval town called Annecy, an hour and a half trip northeast of Lyon.

I went with a fairly large group to Pérouges. We finished with classes and took the TGV to a town called Meximieux. We needed to walk along the street to get to Pérouges from there. A group of Americans walking through small French villages certainly looked strange. When we got to the city, it looked like a ghost town. I began to question why we came here in the first place, but as we walked around the city, I then understood. It was beautiful and looked like it was straight out of La Belle et la Bête. We walked around the city and then from there went to a hotel where we ate galette and drank cidre.

Here’s a picture of me having some fun in the snow at Pérouges:

On Saturday, just myself and another Temple student (Anna Smith-shout out) went to Annecy. We took a blah blah car (European/French version of Uber). Our driver was very nice (oh just realized I should write a good review for him…) The weather finally broke when we arrived and it felt like spring. We walked through a market where furniture, paintings, and sculptures were being sold. I bought some postcards. Then we decided to walk all the way up the hill the city is on, only to find that all the museums close between 12h to 14h. So we walked back down the hill and got some great pizzas to eat (don’t judge; it was the cheapest thing on the menu). Then we went back up to go to the museums (only 3.50 euros for two museums). It was well worth it. While Anna enjoyed the modern art pieces, I reveled in paintings of the French countryside. We got a great view of the city from the base of the museum:

But while day trips are nice, being in your host city is a wonderful feeling too. Today I had a two hour break, so I biked to the top of one of the mounts of Lyon (la Croix-Rousse) and got this awesome shot: