On Wednesday afternoon, Oct 8, we visited one of my colleagues (who also teaches English in Trévoux) Mélanie and her 3 kids. We then went bowling in Villefranche, the closest "city" to the west of
our village, Chatillon. We had a great time visiting with them, and look forward to our next adventure together! Villefranche, about 35 minutes away, has a large selection of retail stores, movie theaters and restaurants.
Thise photos come from Vieux Lyon as well, from Rue du Boeuf. The
Hotel Tour Rose has this beautiful pink tower in the inner courtyard. These pictures dont do the building or the area justice, they are just breathtaking!
We took our first long weekend adventure trip to Annecy in October to visit the friends we had made at Les Grottes de Cerdon
last month.
Our first official visit to Lyon as a family! We meandered the outskirts of town attempting to read the huge falling-apart paper city street map that we had and finally found an access street to one of the areas we were trying to get to! (We now have a GPS!) We first visited the Theatres Romains, the Grand Theatre, the oldest theater in France, built in 15 BC to seat 30,000 spectators and still used for modern perfomances, and the smaller Odéon, with its geometric tiled flooring. It was amazing to realize that this was the oldest structure that our kids and Derek had ever seen (I've been to Athens). 
The return home to Chatillon from Paris was as long or longer than the way there. We were starving, and stopped in the middle of nowhere (seriously), and found a small village with a couple of good restaurants, picked one, and proceeded to have a three and a half hour LUNCH. Course after course... we waddled out, content and sleepy and had to drive the rest of the way (it is about 5 hours if you DONT stop to eat!) The scenery was picturesque, and we saw this chateau with moutons grazing below it!
After a rather lazy day doing not much of anything, the kids stayed home with a sitter at Mehdi's house (and played Wii) while the adults all went on a fancy dinner bateau mouche on a beautiful warm Paris evening. The sky was clear, Paris lights sparkled, and Parisiens and tourists mingled along all of the quai's of the Seine River with picnic dinners of wine and cheese (mostly wine) as they watched all of the tour boats cruise up and down the banks. Ironically, we were a bit jealous of their spot, as they were at the same time jealous of ours (on a "croisière de luxe"). It was lovely to get to know Christian and Miriam, and to celebrate the beginning of our year in France with our dear friends Brigitte and Philippe!
Then on Friday Sept 25, the kids and I went with Brigitte to visit Maxime's collège (middle school) and we were guests for his English class. They were thrilled to meet real Americans, and enjoyed practicing their English, while Heather & Brandon attempted some of their new French skills. Brigitte took lots of pictures and video, see attached!