Fete de la Renaissance..April 16th

Ok guys so today was “La Fete de la Renaissance” here in Lyon. Now for those of you who do not speak french, this means “The Renaissance Celebration”. For all of today french people here in Lyon celebrated the Renaissance and what it brought to the world. All i can say is, as normal with every “fete” in France, the French went all out.

We had seen tents being put up around our area and couldn’t quite figure out why exactly they were being put up. During breakfast then today we heard these really loud bangs. If I am being completely honest it did kind of freak us out at first. We ran to our window only to see a massive parade walking right by our apartment block! It was huge, and followed by massive crowds of spectators. They were approaching the “Musee de Gadagne” which is a museum right beside us here in the old part of Lyon. The parade then came to a halt, and people started partaking in fake sword fights, battles and there were even guys doing all sorts of crazy tricks with flags. To top it all off as well there was some crazy guy who had a mini hand-held cannon which he fired at random spurs. The noise off this thing was unbearable and at first when we heard it we genuinely thought someone had been shot outside our apartment! It was mental!

I have to say it was pretty cool to witness and as usual when it comes to demonstrations there doesn’t seem to be anyone better than the French. We regretted not exploring more today and seeing what else was going on but with Man Utd playing Man city and Real Madrid playing Barcelona in soccer , it would have had to have been something really crazy to distract our attention from the football. 😉

So there you go, the 16th of April means the celebration of the Renaissance here in Lyon. Its something to put in the diary for next year 😉

Its crazy but the French seem to have a special day for nearly everything. Sure why not eyy 😉