December 7-10 = Fête des Lumières! It's a Lyon thing. So way back when Lyon used to celebrate December 8th every year with fireworks and such to thank Mary for saving them from the plague ( I don't know the whole story behind that... ), so anyway one year there was a flood so they couldn't do fireworks, but everyone put candles in their windows and voilà: the fête has been going on ever since with light shows all over the city.

This picture actually has nothing to do with the fête, it's just my school (Lyon 2) at night on the Rhône.

This doesn't give the streets justice because they're all pretty.. but it gives you an idea.

NOW is the fête. A lot of them are blurry.. but I'm putting them up anyway because it was so cool!

They changed the colors of the lights on this church, but then sometimes there were suns floating across like this.

Part of the light show at St. Jean: dragons!! I don't even know how to explain it. They had music and the lights on the church changed.. sometimes it just looked like lightening, sometimes it was pictures like this.. etc...

Behold: Fourvier!

This is me trying to stay still enough to take a picture on night vision from Fouvier of the city.

This is Pat trying to be nice and taking one for me... thanks Pat...A for effort

Bellecour

Some random street we took along the river.

I have no explanation for this- it's just pretty

These were all over next to Hotel de Ville.

Katie and Hillary

Hillary and I normal..

Hillary and I encore

I have yet to go on the ferris wheel...

Not the best picture.. just a pont

Here are all of the green things from earlier ( not with the other picture because this was the next night)

A little fire show at the fountain in Place de Terreaux before the REAL show

The REAL show: this is the music man who controlled the fire with what strings he played.

Lots of fire.. nice and warm when it's been negative degrees here!

You can't really get the whole idea of this.. so I'm going to explain it. This is a man covered in lights on top of the world. The ball was just like a big balloon but the pictures projected on it moved so it actually looked like the whole thing was moving.

This is that man with wings.

One of the spirals on the side. We were too close foe me to get a picture of everything but these were on both sides of Hotel de Ville.


And lastly: Hotel de Ville on fire! So not really, but it looked like it from up at Fourvier. I guess the night before (the 8th- the BIG night) was CRAZY in Place de Terreaux and it got out of hand and supposedly someone in the crowd died.. but I really don't know anything more about that. :/ On a lighter note: it was amazing!