Yesterday my parents arrived from Vienna, and we had a lovely dinner in Croix-Rousse. This was at a "bouchon", a traditional Lyonnais restaurant. They had a wide range of foods available, and I settled for a "aile de raie", which was a ray fin with a white wine sauce from Grenoble and some citron pieces and herbs on top. The sides were offered to the whole table, which lets you choose and also take as much as you want (great way against overeating!). What I found peculiar, but rather effective, was the reservation policy they had put in place. You had to actually give them your credit card details and they would charge you 15€ per person if you didn't show up! Harsh, but rather effective. I was very nervous to not be there on time (I'm late sometimes), but we managed. 

The food was absolutely delicious and much lighter than Austrian food, which is usually meat and carbohydrates, which makes it rather heavy. I absolutely had to have a dessert, so I took a "Baba ivre au rhum", which translates to Baba (please google it if you want to know what it looks like, I have absolutely no idea what it was made of) drunk with rum. They actually prepared it at our table, which meant pouring the rum over it and covering it with mascarpone. In my opinion, the french speaking world does seem to have a lot more alcoholic desserts than Austria does.

Today I went to Confluences again with my family and friends to look at the temporary exhibitions, and later we went to the Aquarium, which was all in french. The educational benefit was much greater than in the Vienna Aquarium, if one speaks french. We saw some really weird fish (one is in the picture) and you could even touch sea creatures like sea cucumbers, star fish, rays and plaice! In total, we probably spend about two and a half hours there. After that, we had some french dinner at a restaurant close by, and in the evening I went to the inner city and old Lyon with a friend from Austria who is here for this weekend. Also, next week is totally free since it's the "Conges", our autumn holidays! Although I was a bit shocked to learn that they don't have end-of-semester holidays like we do in Austria (thank god I return to Austria before the new semester), I'm happy that I have some time away to study on my own.