Friends - and flowers

I am writing from a rare indoor location – the home of our friends Dominque and Roger Micallef in Lyon. After having lived in Lyon for a year in 2004-5, I am overwhelmed by feelings of familiarity and fondness for this amazing city. If you have not been to Lyon, put it on your bucket list. At the confluence of the Rhône and Saone rivers, it is a city of ancient Roman remains, medieval neighborhoods, immigrant communities, agricultural markets, fine arts, youth culture and universities, high tech, medical excellence and fine public transportation. It feels like home to me. We are staying here a few days so I can get a thyroid test ordered by my doctor back home, as well as a cortisone shot in my troublesome knee, and Joe and I - and maybe even Jacob - can get our hair cut. 

We've had a particularly social few weeks. We spent a wonderful week with Joe's organizing colleague LeeAnn Hall from Seattle, who was in Europe for a family wedding.  We met her in Milan and she joined us in traveling around northern and central Italy. 

Milan was a surprise for me. It was never on my bucket list, but it should have been. After a delicious pizza dinner, we spent the first night there in the train station parking lot, a relatively safe place to spend Saturday night before attending Anglican church services on Sunday morning. After church, at the direction of the vicar, we walked up Via Solferino to La Scala Opera House, the Galleria of high-end fashion shops, and the majestic Milan Cathedral. Milan is a fashion capital, and that is expressed by seemingly every resident.  People dress to impress, using their bodies as a canvas for artistic statements. I have never been in such a great city for people watching. 





Sunday evening we spent in the parking lot of a camping supply store near the airport, near where we were picking LeeAnn up on Monday morning. By Tuesday, we were in Venice, riding bus-boats (with Jacob) and walking along the city's watery streets and bridges. On Wednesday, Joe and LeeAnn visited the island communities of Murano (known for glassmaking) and Burano (known for lacemaking and colorful houses) while I stayed in our beachside campground and did laundry and pottered around nearby. 








Thursday, after stopping to get our second bicycle with a wonderful home-made basket for Jacob, we headed to Charlottesville's sister city, Poggio a Caiano, for dinner with Vice Mayor (and mayoral candidate) Francesco Puggelli, his lovely wife Francesca, and a dozen other friends we had made on our previous visit there last July. On the way, we stopped at another favorite place - Pistoia. 



Then it was on to Florence, for a day of sightseeing, and back to Milan, to people watch and drop LeeAnn off for her flight back to the US.  



Joe and I have spent the last week slowly working our way out of Italy into southern France.  Fortuitously, my high school friend Judy Bagley-Bonner and her husband Brian, who co-pastor a UCC church in Florida, were in Arles as part of their sabbatical, and we met there for lunch.  It was wonderful to see them, and such a fun experience to have met in France when Florida often seems too far away to visit. 

We visited the Roman theaters and aquaducts in Arles, Nïmes and Orange (photos, below), drove the "Route touristique du Côtes du Rhône" and bought a case of very nice wine, and have now arrived in Lyon to visit yet more friends and go to the church we attended when we lived here. 




On Wednesday - the halfway point of our six-month sojourn - we will hit the road again for the slow trip to Normandy, to visit the place where my grandfather led troops onto Omaha Beach in 1944. Until then, we will soak in the delights of Lyon and our friends here, while thinking often of our friends back home, who we haven't seen in three months. 
_____

Alpine Flowers - the photo blog

To get to Italy from Prague, we traveled through a lot of mountains, as we had a couple weeks before, on our way to Slovakia from France.  The Alps were wonderful in all their incarnations. We have thrown snowballs and hiked along icy streams of melted snow, followed cross country ski trails through the mountain woods, enjoyed majestic vistas, and visited tiny Alpine villages. But photographically, the most fun were the early spring flowers and lichens.  A few examples follow.










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