and she explores...

Now that we're pretty well settled in and know our way around, I've been trying to explore some more of the city. On Sunday, after our lovely market experience, I took a stroll late in the afternoon and found the Parc Tete d'Or, which seems huge!! There are many little small gardens, what looked like a snack bar/ restaurant, a little train, pony rides, many fields for playing, many trees for sitting under.... and an incredible number of really cute little French children (how do they learn to speak French so young? astounding, really...) At least half of those little kids had either a scooter or a tricycle;

they're really big on scooters here (Ciaaaaao.) I can't wait until the warm weather comes so that we can go have picnics in the parc. Despite the cold weather, there were a lot of people in the parc. It seems that on Sundays the French love to take an afternoon promenade. Scottie said that there were a lot of people walking around in Vieux Lyon, too.
Yesterday was sort of dreary - I spent about 8 hours in the IEP and that was plenty for me. The highlight of the day was definitely dinner. Scottie was a little - strike that, very frustrated with the people in their class and so we decided to have a pleasant, soothing dinner. We went to Monoprix and bought what we needed for Scottie to make a lovely porc loin dish. I made mashed potatoes (btw, we bought AMAZING potatoes and the whole bag was only1.15 euros... and we only used half the bag to make a MAMMOTH amount of mashed potatoes. yesssss!) and green beans. We had a little bread and brie before dinner, along with some cheap red wine. But the piece de la resistance (haha, am I pretentious yet?) was most certainly Scottie's porc. It was rolled up with a stuffing of apples, raisons, endives, basil, mint, and rosemary, then rolled in ham that was held in place by whole cloves. She baked it in the oven and the smell was amazing. Bien fait, Scottie!
Today I had the afternoon off while the others had class, so I had some time to explore on my own. I crossed the Rhone on the Pont Galieni, near the IEP, and wound my way through a good number of streets until I was back on our side of town. I went in a few shops here and there on the rue Victor Hugo and the Rue de la Republique, but I also strayed into some little back streets, which I suppose ran right behind Republique. That's where I found all the restaurants and shops. There are some beauuuuutiful clothes in this city and it was actually a little depressing to see them all and not be able to buy any! I'm holding out for les soldes - the supposedly huge sales that start tomorrow morning. I definitely want to buy some new clothes to round out what I brought with me and I think I ought to have some time to go this week. If I can get out of the apartment tomorrow morning I may wander around again and see what they have to offer. Why do I like pretty things? It's going to do me in...