Turkey and Lights

The rest of October was pretty quiet. We got into our work and hung out in Geneva. Then the first weekend in November, I spent it in a hospital getting the deviated septum in my nose fixed. The Swiss hospitals are pretty nice and I spent 2 nights there, with Travers visiting during the days and watching movies with me on the ipad.  I worked from home the following week and finally felt a bit better the next weekend, but not quite enough to travel. At this point, we had been home in Geneva for 4 weekends in a row and we were getting restless. Luckily, we had a trip coming up at the end of November to go back to San Francisco!

We arrived just a day after Thanksgiving, and lucky girl that I am, my family postponed their Thanksgiving dinner so that Travers and I could enjoy some Turkey, mashed potatoes and gravy. Yummm.  Thanksgiving is one of my favorite holidays so I was thrilled to be able to celebrate it with family. And we were able to spend time with our niece, Kelsea, and my sister-in-law, Suzy, who came up from San Luis Obispo to spend the holiday with us. We spent the entire weekend at my parents house, having dim sum on Sunday with my Aunts, Uncles and cousins, and then finally driving into the city on Sunday night so that Travers could easily get to and from work for the next week.


The rest of the week we stayed in the city. I shopped mostly and saw lots of friends. I hadn't been back to San Francisco in a year, and it was interesting to see what had changed, what shops closed, what restaurants opened. But it was also great to see how many things had stayed the same.  Its always sad to say goodbye, but luckily, I'll be coming back to San Francisco towards the end of January for a work trip so hopefully I'll get to spend some time with more family and friends while I'm there.

After we got back from SF, we decided we couldn't let more than 2 weekends in a row go by without going somewhere, even if it is just for a day. We tend to get restless staying in Geneva for too long, so we immediately planned a day trip to Lyon in December.

We rented a car and drove to Lyon. It was a quick drive, only a couple hours and through some pretty snow-covered areas of France.  Lyon was having their annual Festival of Lights event, which we had been told was amazing to see.  Lyon is also known as the gastronomical capital of the world so we knew we'd be in for a treat. We arrived around lunchtime, parked the car, and walked through the town. It was bustling with people and you could see structures set up throughout the city that were sure to light up once the sun set. We strolled to the popular Place Bellecour and further down to Place Carnot where a Christmas Market was set up. We grabbed some vin chaud and strolled through the shops, making our way to the opposite end where we found the restaurant where we wanted to have lunch, Brasserie Georges.

We rounded the corner to the restaurant, and saw a HUGE line outside. At first, we weren't quite sure we wanted to wait, but we figured it must be good if this many people were waiting. So we got in line and it moved quite quickly. We were about halfway there, when one of the hosts came through the line asking each group how many they were. When he got to us and we said two, he said, go to the front of the line, they have a table for you!  So we skipped the line and got seated much faster than we thought. Hooray!

The inside of the restaurant was much larger than we expected, but we were sat right by the window so we could see the people outside as well as take in all the ambiance inside. The service was great, and every few minutes they would dim the lights and play the happy birthday song. We finally figured out that there weren't that many birthdays but every time someone would order their specialty dessert they would play the song! And of course, the food was delicious!  We started with some tasty Dauphine Raviolis, then Travers had a knuckle of piglet and I had one of their specialties of the day, a tasty confit of duck. We topped it all off with a  delicious dessert and coffees then headed back out into the cold to check out the rest of the festival!

We strolled through the streets the rest of the afternoon, checking out the town of Lyon, waiting for the sun to go down and the lights to come on. Finally at 6pm the festival began and we started seeing all sorts of lights and festivities begin. We also noticed the town was getting more and more crowded now that the 'show' had started. Here are a few good shots I took throughout the evening.

We spent the next 3 hours walking the town, fighting through crowds and seeing all these wonderful light shows. The crowds were getting really thick now and it was getting more and more difficult to walk anywhere. We were being hereded down certain streets and were literally squashed between people, barely able to move. At this point, we called it a night and slowly made our way back to the car and drove the short drive back to Geneva. It was a great day trip and got our travel bug going again. Just what we needed!