Lyon, Annecy, Chammonix

The CUEF (where we were taking language classes) had an excursion to Lyon for a day. Lyon is the second biggest city in France, although it does switch between Marseilles depending where the students are. Since it was such a huge city, it was really hard to see everything there was to see. So Alexis and I just walked around doing non-touristy things instead because we knew there was no way to do all of the tourist stuff anyway.

Le Petit Prince

View of the huge cathedral at the top of the hill from a bridge along one of Lyon's rivers.

The first Starbucks I had had in FOREVER. It was amazing. I almost died of happiness.

Cool fountain in the main plaza thing.

Lyon was probably one of my favorite cities I've been to ever. There was a street with cool vintage stores, a main shopping street with the biggest brands, and also just random places to get lost in on purpose that still were "photogenic." Alexis and I stumbled upon this amazing pharmacy (I have a weird obsession with pharmacies and compare them a lot...) that was packed with people. It was apparently the cheapest one in Lyon. It was stacked high with every French skincare brand you could imagine for the most amazing prices. I didn't get anything, unfortunately, because not only did I not need anything, but I didn't have the finances. Alexis and I realized after going to the pharmacy that we were running late, so we literally ran to the bus to go back home. It was a good time.

Annecy, where we stopped before going to Chammonix.

The next day we had an excursion to Chammonix, which is the home of Mont Blanc, the tallest mountain in Europe. We stopped in Annecy on the way there to get a quick breakfast. Annecy is kind of like the French version of Venice. There's a bunch of canals that run though it.

I wish we had more time there.

View of Mont Blanc and the glaciers from our bus.

Unfortunately, it was too windy to go to the top of the mountain (usually people take a lift up to the top), so people just went to the top of the mountain across from it that wasn't as high in order to see the city. I didn't think it was worth forty euros to do that though, so I just stayed in Chammonix and chilled with some other kids who were also broke. It was kind of boring because it was so expensive, and if you have no money you can't do much, and there was only one street that had anything on it. We ended up chilling for a couple hours at this one bar, making friends with the bartender (who was from Liverpool), talking to him about working in Europe (apparently if you speak English you're set to work there), and wandering around the city. Before going home, Alexis and I got this amazing dark chocolate pistacchio thing at a bakery. It was delicious.