Ten days at my friend's place

Hi everyone,

The last time that I wrote about some of my experiences in the Vercors, I just arrived at my friend’s house in Etoile-sur –Rhone. It was very nice to see my friends again and to finally enter their new build house for the first time. It’s a very nice home with modern decoration and a lot of space around it. Perfect for a young family I would say. On Sunday we first went to a local market in Bourges-Les-Valence, where they usually buy their fruits and vegetables because it’s way cheaper than in the supermarket. After that we had lunch at Elodie’s parents, who I also know since I’ve met Elodie. It was very nice to see the changes that they made in their decoration and garden, for I hadn’t been there in a long time.

Because of the fact that my friends had to work throughout the week, I have visited some sights in the environment on my own. I could use Elodie’s car to go wherever I wanted to go. So I went to the Roman city Avignon, where I visited the palace of the popes. I hired an audio guide and walked myself through the rooms and gardens. I found it really interesting, because the palace is very well preserved. Besides that, Avignon keeps one of the most famous bridges, because of the song ‘Sur le pont d’Avignon, l’on y danse, l’on y danse. Sur le pont d’Avignon, l’on y danse tout en rond’. I also went to another part of the city where I had lunch and a nice view on the city from a castle build up that hill and I ate a delicious crêpe sucré for just one euro :-).

I’ve also been to Lyon, the third city of France. In Lyon, I followed a guided tour through the old part of the city. Lyon is marked by a hill called Fourvière, that has a big, well preserved basilica that dominates the skyline. The interior of this basilica is very impressive. There are several frescos wrought with gold and the ceilings are very colorful. Outside of the basilica there is a stunning view on the city. The other important hill in Lyon is called La Croix-Rousse, where the silk industry took and takes place. Now the work is done by nine people whereas in earlier times thousands of workers were needed. Furthermore, Lyon is also a Roman city and that shows, because of the amphitheaters that are just next to the basilica. Finally we walked through the medieval part of Lyon where we have ‘traboulés’ the particular ‘traboules’. This needs some explanation I guess. In some streets in Lyon, you can find doors with open access that lead to corridors in between buildings. People who currently live in these buildings have access to their houses via these corridors. These traboules are mostly built in an Italian style, with particular arches, stained windows and a central well. At some places the corridors’ ceilings are open, so you can look up to the sky and the houses that adjoin these open spaces. Some of them keep towers that are bigger than the surrounding rooftops, as a kind of watchtower. People (like tax collectors) also showed this way that they had enough money to build such a tall building with the expensive material where these buildings are constructed with. A nice quality of this material (tuff) is that it appears in several colors, that’s why I found the old part of Lyon a very pleasant environment to walk around.

On Friday it was time to prepare everything for the baptism of my friends’ daughter Noéline that would take place on Saturday. It has been a very cozy day with family, friends, a lot of food, jeux de boules, gifts and a lot of nice conversations!

On Sunday there was no time to rest for me, because I booked a canyoning experience near Die, in the Vercors. Not only the canyoning itself was an experience but also to get to the base from the canyoning organization. On the road to Die, there were extensive rains that made driving itself a real challenge. Luckily it wasn’t that hard to find the place where we had to gather, because I met the guide at the gas station; what a nice coincidence! I joined a group of French people who were colleagues. We got our wetsuits and the other equipment and then we had to follow the guide to another place, were we parked our cars and walked up hill for another 30 minutes to reach the sours of the river. During this hike we saw a rare fire salamander, so we got some reward for the effort. The purpose of canyoning is to follow a river in the mountains, that sounds simple but there are several waterfalls during the descent, so then we had to do some abseiling. I’ll still get some photos and movies from the canyoning, because one of them had a GoPro camera that he used to tape everything.

So, this is a ‘short’ resume of my week over here, today I’m going to prepare a Dutch dish for my friends, tomorrow I’ll probably go to Montélimar and Wednesday at 7:30 my train leaves from Valence train station. I expect that it will also be nice to be home for a few weeks, so that I can graduate and prepare myself for my next journey: the Interrail, which starts on the fourth of October.

Hope you enjoyed this report!

Liefs, Danouck.