NANCY

Population: 105.000



Nancy is one small French city in the region of Lorraine.

Lorraine have borders with Belgium, Luxembourg and Germany. If you are not familiar with Lorraine, its history and heritages, you maybe have heard about the marvelous delicious quiche lorraine. The food in France usually is very good and in Lorraine it’s not an exception. They have some great salt and sweet food.

Nowadays Lorraine’s capital is Metz, but in the past when it was a duchy, Nancy was the central city. The remaints of that period can be seen in the central area of the city, being place Stanislas the main spot of it.

Stanislaw Leszczynski, known as Stanislas, was a king of Polish-Lithuanian Commonwelth. His daughter Maria married to the French king Louis XV and after the loss of the throne he became duke of Lorraine. This fact produced a rich heritage and development to the city. Later the city had the development of coal mining industry and recently decadence with services becoming the main economical activity.
  

If you never heard about quiche Lorraine or Stanislas, Nancy is known also for one of the most famous French man: Michel Platini. Considered the best French football player he borned in Joeuf, Lorraine, but started to make history playing for the local team AS Nancy from 1972-1979.

Due to the many universities and colleges located in Nancy it is considered a student city, but beside all these features Nancy is also known for the Ecole de Nancy, an Art Nouveau style movement made by artists and architects that influenced the production of furniture, glassware and decorative arts, but can be seen nowadays mainly by architecture.

To get to know the École de Nancy you can start visiting the museum of the Ecole de Nancy, a 1909 house of one of the supporters of the movement.

From there the best way is simply walking around in the city of Nancy. When you less expect you see a house from 1895 with a very peculiar architecture. They are spread over the city with some areas concentrating more exemplaries of the Ecole de Nancy architecture.

And the most impressive is the fact that people are still leaving in these houses. A very peculiar architecture, buildings from the end of the 19^th century and beginning of the 20^th century just like another regular house. Nancy is the city where people live in museums. Historical buildings with more than 100 years old.

LYON

Population: 470,000 inhabitants

Lyon is a city located in the region of the Rhône-Alpes founded by Romans officially in 43 BC, so there is more than 2.000 years of history. Even being so old Lyon is far from being a decadent place. It is a very dynamic and modern city being a gastronomic reference in France.

 

Even being the 3rd biggest city in France and the 2nd biggest metropolitan area, it doesn`t feel like a huge city, far from being a crazy metropolis. Actually it feels very cosy and nice place to live with calm streets and filled with many options of restaurants, bars, cinemas, open market. 

Like Paris, Lyon is a great touristic destination to explore, but the difference from the capital is that you will visit the main sights with calm and without the endless huge bunch of tourists.

  

One of these sights is the Notre Dame de Fourviere. Located on the top of the hill reaching it provides a good walk passing by the St. Jean cathedral and the Gaulese theater and when you get there you are rewarded with the beautiful Fourvière basilica and the view of Lyon.

For those who love cinema Lyon is where it all started. The brothers Auguste and Louis Lumière worked in their father's photographic firm and there they started to develop moving pictures technique that resulted in the film camera, Cinématographe. The first film called 'Workers leaving the Lumière factory' was played on 1895 for the first time in public in Paris. It was a 46 seconds movie filmed by Louis Lumiere at Lyon showing the workers leaving the factory after a day of work. When it came to public the news that you could see moving pictures and not only still pictures it made everybody curious and willing to go and see it. Now the house of the Lumière brothers is a museum.

For more of the first movies in history: http://www.institut-lumiere.org/francais/films/1seance/accueil.html

At Lyon 2 rivers crosses its center and meets, the Rhône (to the East) and the Saône (to the West).

Relax sitting along the river can be a perfect activity for the end of the day. Admiring the beauty of the bridges or just watching the water, people and vehicles passing by.

Lyon hide treasures like wall paintings made by Cité Création (http://www.cite-creation.com/). They are not only impressive and beautiful paintings on the side of the buildings, but each painting has a history background and references to that period.

The amazing Gratte-Ciel at Villeurbanne (a commune in the Rhône region, at northeast of Lyon), built around 1930, is incredibly futuristic and impressive still nowadays. For the time it was built it was revolutionary. The idea was to offer a modern place to live for poor and middle class people and at the same time modernize the center of Villeurbanne.

Each apartment had separate rooms like kitchen, bathroom, bedrooms, what nowadays is very usual back in that time when most of families were used to sleep together in the same room and the toilet being outside of home this concept of separate rooms was shocking. It is one of the most impressive and modern architecture I have ever seen and it is from 1930!!! The lines of the buildings that bring to life a feeling of surrealism and futurism.

ROME - Italian déjà vu

Second time in Rome, like Paris it was my second time in the capital of Italy. But different from the capital of France, Rome definitely didn`t reserve a surprise, a relevant change.

For the first time I took the high speed train in Italy, from Milan to Rome, and comparing with the German ICE or the French TGV it shakes like a blender. Up and down, left and right.

The customer service in the Italian capital was a shame. It's unbelievable how bad they treat the customers. Long time to serve, very quick to collect the bill.

On the first time in Rome I was really surprised how so many old and important things were in such abandoned conditions. It may also be called as the Italian 'charm', but this time places seen even more 1

'abandoned' and deteriorated.

The colisseum and the tourists are still there the same way it was 2 years ago.

The mummy statue artist is still there in the same place I met 2 years ago. Standing still under the Italian summer sun.

The South America Indian is still in the same place playing the same South American songs. Last time he could play only 2 songs, this time after 2 years he learned some new songs to play.

The pizza is still the same weird one without mixing the ingredients.

The Vatican still the same there, with the German Papa and the Swiss army wearing that very particular uniform still there to protect him in this crazy and dangerous world.

The Fontana de Trevi still beautiful atracting a lot of tourists that throw coins in there to go back. I threw a coin 2 years ago and the so famous wish to go back to Rome someday became true... this time there was no coin threw in there...

The fabulous and unique Italian icecream is still there.

Still with all these sameness, decadence and problems, Italy is STILL a lovely small place in the world.

PICCOLA TI AMO!