The SnippEthel

I spent Friday afternoon on the train to join Leo in Western Loire for the weekend. This is a lovely area of France full of history and monuments. Leo drove me around and I saw:
A royal abbey (huge!)

A pig on an old tapestry

Weird mushrooms including this one

Posh people having a picnic with real tables, real cutlery, real glasses and even candlesticks (although it was very sunny...!)

A man in white (probably looking for his lady - last seen in London near Shaftesbury Avenue) who would later drag Don Giovanni (left) to hell...

A trendy teddy bear

Merry the hobbit

Beautiful old houses like this one

And troglodytic houses, carved in the rock

A huge castle built in the 11th and 12th century

... and a very happy naked girl

I have received my Velo'v card today!

But what is Velo'v, you might say... Velo'v is a brilliant and simple concept.
There are about 3000 bikes provided by the city hall of Lyon. All those bikes are situated in 200 'stations' around Lyon and in the suburbs. You can take a bike where you live, for example, ride to your workplace and park it to the closest velo'v station, where somebody else will use it to go somewhere else.

If you live in Lyon and wish to use the bikes on a regular basis, you can order a long term card (like the one I have received). It cost £7 (10€) for a whole year. After that, you can use the bike as much as you want, considering the first half hour is totally free and after that it is about 0,50€ per hour.
If you are just passing by, you can get a short term card which costs 1€. Once again, the first half hour is free and then it's about 1€ per hour.
It is really convenient for people who have no opportunity to store their bikes at home or at work, and you don't need to worry that someone is going to steal your beloved bicycle.
The bikes are really handy with a basket at the front, three levels of speed (not sure how to explain this, but you get the idea... don't you..?) the required lights and the thing to tie your bike to something to avoid theft (obvious lack of vocabulary here...).
Everyone loves Velo'v in Lyon, they constantly add more stations and more bicycles and the concept has already reached other French towns. More and more people choose to use bikes instead of cars in town which makes the city much more agreable and clean.
It has also brought back an old habit of our ancestors : the romantic cycling... All around Lyon, you come accross young men riding Velo'v with their girls facing them, sitting on the handlebar... I'll try and take a picture sometime soon. Romance is back in the heart of our cities, so bucolic!

Gigi & Alf came over at the weekend. I hadn't seen them for more than two years but strangely, from the start, it just felt like we had never been apart.


We had a great time eating ice creams, but the main problem was : the heat... it makes you want to lie eternally in the shade, waiting for an hypothetic wind that will never come.

We went to Lyon's main park: the Golden Head Park (le parc de la Tête d'Or) where you can rent pedal boats and electric boats to go on the lake... that's what we did...

Inexorably, it all ended in a water battle, but I reckon it would have been much funnier if I HAD HAD A BOTTLE TOO!!!
the time we arrived to the car, everyone was dry again.
I let Alf play a bit with Photo Booth:

but whatever Gigi does, she looks pretty:

You wouldn't know we used to call her 'the hyena', would you?!!

I spent the whole Easter weekend in Avignon with Leo.
On this day, a year ago, we were celebrating Juju's birthday... oh and yes, this is when we met!

In Lyon, we don't have the Swiss Tower, that beautiful Norman Foster building commonly known as the Gherkin which brings beauty to the City of London. However, in Lyon, we have 'le Crayon' aka 'the Pencil'. It's probably the tallest building (no time for research, sorry) and it's called like that because it looks like a pencil, only much... bigger (you may pronounce this last word with an american accent, as I very much like to say it, 'bigger' being one of my favourite words to say in American - thanks to Comfort Eagle by the great band Cake - 'liar' is another word of the kind... I could say 'liar' all day long just for fun...)