Lions, cider and jazz, oh my!

Two weeks ago two friends and I took a day-trip to Vienne , France for their wildly popular annual Jazz Fest.  Left early and came back after midnight , with lots of outdoor jazz concerts, picnics, sangria and old Roman remnants.  We walked out of the train station right into the middle of the city and saw the strangest sights.  Just in front of us was a fully mature male lion (in cage) and two men dressed in circus costumes walking a zebra and a donkey. Insane!  I walked right up to the lion and was so close I could smell his breath.  His eyes were striking and had the zebra and donkey in sight the entire time, occasionally darting if the horses moved.  He definitely wanted to snack on those four-leggeds, but gave the humans zero interest.  I’ve never been so close to a lion without separating glass, however as I was just as close to see his enormous canine teeth, the names “Siegfried” and “Roy” popped in my head and I backed up.  Pictures taken, astonishing animal, done.

A British-French-American 4th of July

My version of the Our Lady Liberty à la 1664

For the 4^th of July two of my American friends and I got together to celebrate, but we naturally got started on the 3^rd to welcome in the 4^th.  Met by the Rhône river to have a few drinks quayside and enjoy the view.  I brought a bottle of pink wine and the French-version of a Dixie plastic cup.  In other words that means my cup was super small and I got nearly 6 glasses out of one bottle of wine.  I was drinking ‘pink’ wine, as it was so inexpensive that I didn’t feel like it could actually merit the Rosé title.  We drank, walked to a convenience store for some more aperitifs, then to one of the folks apartments before heading out for the night to a British pub.  We wanted to celebrate American first for our national holiday first, so we made s’mores in the microwave and took pictures with the good ol’ red white and blue. Our s’mores were somewhat Franco-American however and made with tea cookie/crackers instead of graham crackers, as those don’t exist in France.  Marshmallows are not the easiest thing to come by either, but the chocolate is ridiculously plentiful and in a bounty of varieties.  Perhaps we got heavy-handed with the chocolate… but I don’t think that’s possible.