Lyon, la Fête des Lumières

Every year in December, the city of Lyon celebrates the Fête des Lumières, a 4-day, several million-visitor, world-renowned festival of lights. 

This year, I was there :)

The Festival of Lights started in 1643, when the Plague hit Lyon and the magistrates promised to forever honor the Virgin Mary with candles and lumignons if the town of Lyon was spared.  Thus, still today, the Lyonnais people light candles in honor of Mary, and the municipal buildings of the city are lit with extravagant displays of lights.

Jess and I took a train to Lyon to visit a new friend, Claudia.  She's one of those people we'd never actually met, but once we did, we felt we'd been friends forever.  That's a great way to start an adventure :)

The crowds were incredible, and sometimes literally impenetrable.  To escape the throngs in the streets, we ducked off into a Christmas market...which was almost worse! 

The mass of people at the Christmas Market, all craving a vin chaud!

Still, they had some really interesting booths that did a great job of putting me (even further) in the Christmas spirit :)

One that was lined entirely in wrapping paper...

One that had a vat of homemade tartiflette--potatoes, bacon, and reblochon cheese--which smells rich and hearty and just reminds me of cold winters

One that was full of liqueurs with risqué names

One Canadian booth that sold a hot drink called Caribou

And one that made Nutella crêpes (and LOTS of them).

We had dinner around 10 p.m., and by the time we were finished a lot of the crowd had dispersed.  It's amazing how much room strollers and young kids take up on the streets, and how much more room there is when they go to bed!

Each light show was mapped on a plan of the city, and we tried to hit as many as we could.  There were solar-powered windmill lights, pots of fire on the retaining wall leading down to the river, and--my personal favorite--trees filled with hot-pink and bright white origami birds, all illuminated and bright against the dark blue sky. 

There was also....

A whole hill full of dancing space invaders!

Another favorite of mine, the squid that took over an entire alley full of art galleries

Yet another favorite, the GIANT Pixar lamps, all with different colored light filters

And this museum, which danced....

And then turned into a face that moved along to the words when people from the crowd sang into a microphone!

A mermaid in the fountain fishing for rubber duckies

The church that went back to Nature; this one reminded me of my sister :)

And the crowning jewel, Place des Terreaux (I think), where the fountain changed colors along with the tie-dyed ponies.

I've never been so impressed by the power of light, but let's admit it, I'm obsessed with lighting to begin with :P  I can never get enough of Christmas lights, or outdoor decorations, or paper lanterns or strings of lights....so, basically, this festival was one of the coolest things I ever went to :)   Plus they gave us free postcards, so I could share the festival and my fantastic experience with a lot of people on PostCrossing!

Now I just need to find a way to get to Lyon every December for the rest of my life.... ;)