La Fête des Lumières

"The Festival of Light" in English.
It is an annual 3-night event in the beautiful city of Lyon, a few hours north of Aix-en-Provence by train. It originated as a festival to celebrate the day of the Annunciation, a Christian holiday, but it has turned into a giant festival of light displays, music, hot food vendors in the streets, in which the entire city of Lyon comes out to play until 1:00 in the morning the next day.
2 of my housemates, 1 of their friends from home who was visiting, and I decided to spend a night in Lyon and see what all of this was about. It was a nice French college student that I met at a Halloween party that I met that told me about this event, something I had never heard of. He told me that it was imperative that I go, and so I took his advice, and looked up at the event. He was right: I had to go. And thank goodness I did.
First of all, the city of Lyon is gorgeous no matter what. It is a mix of big shopping centers and beautiful rococo-style buildings, and gorgeous cathedrals, with a corner of the city that houses its remains from when the Romans had control. We arrived at the Lyon Part-Dieu train station at a little after 1:00pm on Friday and decided to go to the hotel by foot. It took at least an hour, but it was an amazing stroll through the city.
After the sun set, the entire city began to light up. The strings of lights hanging above us in the streets turned on, and the displays and exhibitions began. Street lights covered in red and blue film lighted the path through the festival, washing the city in eerie colors.

There's no way that I can show you everything that I had the pleasure of seeing that night, but I will try to describe it for you. We walked around with 1-euro cups of mulled wine in our hands, stoppping every now and then for a "bretzel", a hot wrap, or a pastry to keep us going through the night and stopped and saw some of the most beautiful things I have ever seen in my entire life. We walked around with our heads tilted up towards the lights, our mouths hanging every so slightly open in awe. We were all children that night. We even rode a massive ferris wheel, something I haven't done in AGES.

But let me show you at least my favorite display/presentation/exhibit of them all. It was titled "On dirait que..." which means "They would say that...". I don't understand the title. But it consisted of a light projection on the front of the Hôtel de Ville, or the City Hall, which is a beautifully ornate, very pristine-looking building located in a big plaza in the center of Lyon. It was lit up with all sorts of colors to depict a giant toy dollhouse belonging to a child giant. It was a small girl who was also projected in her giant-ess form on the wall of the building next to City Hall. The projection showed what happened to the dollhouse as she played with it, with new figures dancing through the house, what happened when she filled it with water, when she splattered it with paint, etc. Here's the sequence, starting with the building in the middle of the day, when we first arrived in Lyon:
ISN'T THAT AMAZING??? It was my favorite part of the night.
The city was gorgeous and the next day, we went up to two cathedrals perched on the other side of the Saône River of Lyon. There are two rivers in Lyon, the Rhône and the Saône. Here is a view of my travel-mates next to the Saône at the end of our night out on the town during the festival, and another picture of me with a view of Lyon from one of the cathedrals, high above the city.
This must've been one of the most memorable experiences of my life. I only wish that you had all been there to share it with me :)