Holy 'hill of prayer' -- that's a long walk.

I had a fantastic afternoon today. I decided to make the crazy trek up the massive Fourvière hill, to get to the Basilique Notre Dame de Fourvière. I wanted to do this right, so I walked up the winding footpath for 30 minutes until I got to the top instead of taking the tram up. The two things to do at the top of this hill are check out the view of Lyon in its entirety from the lookout or walk around the Basilica. I did both.

The Basilique Notre Dame de Fourvière is lit up every night on a hill that looks down onto the city of Lyon. So after a dozen nights of seeing it up there on that hill, I was intrigued, and decided to devote a whole day to exploring this basilica. I learned that this particular church was built in the late 1800s and that people flock from all over to see it. I can't blame them; it's beautiful inside and out. Which probably explains why it is one of Lyon's main tourist attractions. Notre Dame de Fourvière is filled with intricate stained glass windows, metallic mosaics along the walls and religious sculptures on beams throughout the building.

Here are a few things that I learned about myself today.

1) I really can't stand tourists who refuse to even attempt to speak the language of the country they are visiting.

2) I absolutely adore everything that makes up a house of worship. Yup, folks... whether or not there is a higher power, the fact that hundreds (sometimes thousands) of years ago, religious townsfolk got together and built these magnificent structures which find a way to bring together people of different nationalities and races from all over the world never fails to amaze me. I guess I really began to notice my new found obsession when I was in the Basilique du Sacre Coeur in Paris. It is freakin' awesome in there. (FYI- you can't take pictures in there)

3) The third thing I learned about myself today is how much I love taking pictures of architecture. I was blown away by the details in this church from the doors to the windows to the countless sculptures of Mary along the walls. I taught myself how to adjust my f-stops and shutter speeds to attempt to recreate the magical lighting of this church through its stained glass windows and its candle lit altars. I loved experimenting with the different shutter speeds and training myself to stand perfectly still while I tried to take a picture at 1/10 of a second (not that easy). But I think I got the hang of it. So here are some of my favourite pics of the Basilique Notre Dame de Fourvière.