Reed visits

The Tuesday after my final exams were finished, Reed arrived in France.  The first couple days, he had really bad jet lag and we just hung out around Chambéry.  The weather during the first week was not very good.  It was rainy or cloudy nearly everyday and fairly cold.  I don't think he expected it because he had to buy a sweater here to stay warm.  That Saturday, we decided to go to Lyon.  I thought he'd really like the Notre Dame de Lyon that I saw with my family.  I had never come into Lyon (with the intention of seeing it) by train before, so we got kind of lost coming out of the train station.  I had forgotten that there were two rivers running through Lyon (the Rhône and the Saône), so I was thoroughly confused once we'd crossed over one river and weren't where I thought we'd be.  Anyway, I really like the bridges there, so I took a few pictures:

After I figured out my mistake, we found our way to the big red square with the horse statue (where I was with my family).  From there, we headed up to the Notre Dame de Lyon (which you can see in the background of the horse picture).  Since I'd already been there, I didn't take too many more pictures.

This time when we went to the cathedral, we also went down to the basement part of it.  There weren't really signs so I didn't know what it was, but there was practically a whole other church down there.  I don't have pictures because my camera doesn't do well in low-lighting, but it had all of the chairs set out just like the main floor and seemed to have an altar even.  It was huge down there, but not as ornately decorated as the main level of the church.
After that, we checked out the view from the platform beside the church.

Then we walked down the same way that I did with my family so that we could make a stop by the Roman ruins again.  This time, we came at them from the top and saw where a street and a row of houses used to be, behind the amphitheater.
After that, we spent some time looking around and window-shopping on the Rue de la République (the main shopping street in Lyon).
Lyon is world-renowned for its cuisine, so we decided to stay and have dinner there.  We ate at a restaurant called Les Enfants Terribles.  I had a tomato and mozzerella salad, but Reed, who is a much more adventurous eater than I, got a Lyonnais speciality, tripe.  He kept offering for me to try it, but I told him that I didn't think I could, knowing what it was.


The following day, Sunday, we went to Grenoble.  I thought that Reed would be interested in the Fort de la Bastille (also, I knew that it was open on Sundays, whereas much of France shuts down on Sundays). 
When we first got there, we decided to grab lunch at a local bakery.  I got a baguette and Reed got a sandwich and a strawberry tarte.

We saw all of the normal stuff that I saw the other times, like the major parts of the fort and the views of the city.  It was somewhat cloudy that day so the mountains weren't that clear.

After that, we headed around to the backside of the fort where I noticed these holes in the side of the mountain.  I guess I had noticed them the other times that I was there but I didn't actually consider that one could go in them.  Apparently there were used to fire on the backs of enemies advancing from the rear.  They had a secret stairway that led presumably to the fort.

They were very cool and wet inside but it was interesting to go in.
After looking through the caves, we decided to go up to Mont Jalla.  I saw it with the Cables and wondered if one could go up there.  Well Reed and I decided to do it.  Unfortunately, neither of us uses our eyes so we didn't see the actually gravel path to get up there and ended up taking one that was carved by other people who hadn't found the "official" path which I believe would have been a bit easier.

It is a lot farther up than it looks like in that picture.  It was quite the tiring walk up, but the views at the top were amazing and it was fun to see the more ruined part of the fort.

It was really cool to be up that high in the mountains and to be able to see all the way around.  It turns out that the top part of the fort is currently a monument to all of the Alpine troops that have died in combat.

On the way down, we ended up finding the actual path and took that back down to the fort.  From there, we took the bubble lift down.  After that, we decided that there wasn't that much more to see in Grenoble and headed home to prepare for our trip around France.