Lyon, FR

We left Avignon just in time! The rain was rolling in while we waited at the station, and during the first part of our trip the deluge was so dense, and our train so fast, that it seemed to be raining sideways.

We arrived to skies that were dry, if not quite blue, and made tracks for the Tourist Info Center to see what sort of room we could drum up for our stay. There is a nice hostel in town, but it’s a bit west of the action, and only had room for us in separate gender-divided dorms. We had a nice (and extremely thorough) chat with the very helpful woman in the TIC, who found us a room right in the thick of it at a reasonable rate. Our neighbors are Hermes, Mont Blanc, Luis Vuitton, and Dior, so I wasn’t quite sure we were in the right area, but Christina had no doubts at all.

After hearing much talk of how Lyon is the “food capital of France” we were very curious to check out the restaurant (or bouchon) scene. We strolled around our immediate vicinity, Christina giving vent to some of the shopping angst that has been building for the past several weeks leading up to Paris, where I anticipate disaster, by comparing and evaluating outfits and styles for later purchase. By a circuitous route, leading through all the shops that Christina could find, we made our way to Rue de Brest, circled on our map by the TIC lady as “the place for food”, and where tables spill from restaurants on either side into the street. We ended up at La Route des Pâtes, where we got some really great pasta. Yeah, it’s not French, per-se, but it was pretty great anyway.

Our first full day was to be spent exploring the old city, and mounting Fourvière, the hill overlooking the center of Lyon.

We had a nice look at Lyon’s old town, on the west bank of the Saône river, which sports an exhaustive assortment of cafes and authentic Lyonnaise bouchons and shops. At one of these bouchons we settled in for lunch, to recharge before the big ascent, and played another round of “Roulette Français”, which involves selecting menu items, not quite at random, but leveraging an inadequate knowledge of the vocabulary to know quite what to expect.

This might be familiar to our regular readers from our experience in Bordeaux – a win for both of us, since Christina got a dish that I liked, and I received one that she liked. This time neither of us won, but, as she later remarked, “at least it was French“. Her dish was a huge sausage composed of about 30% meat and 70% “other stuff”, and mine was about half a dozen eggs scrambled into a mould and placed in a bowl of crab soup. The salads were nice though: we’re growing quite fond of chèvre cheese, particularly when wrapped in phyllo pastry then fried, and accompanied by greens and cherry tomatoes; salad lyonnaise seems pretty standard, with the addition of a poached egg and finely chopped ham.

Onward to the top! Or so we thought. As soon as we left the restaurant it began to rain. Lacking an umbrella, we made our way from awning to awning, then on a longer dash through an open space on the east side of the bridge were forced to take shelter in a telephone booth as the rain became a flood. I’m calling it the heaviest rain we’ve seen on the trip so far, but Christina contends that Fort William was as bad. During a brief slackening we waded through the flooded intersection to a cafe where we ordered up a couple of cups of coffee and waited out the worst.

After finally making it back to our hotel, cleaning up, drying off, and changing into fresh clothes, we had another try at it, and walked back into Old Town to begin the climb. I had, for some time, been expecting the heels of my sandles (the cheapest I could find in the Philippines) to wear through, so paper-thin had they become. I had not been expecting the toe piece to snap, but it was in this way, and at this moment that the sandles finally let me down. After a quick and futile repair effort we decided that there was nothing for it but to return to the hotel for my shoes. She walked with me for a couple of blocks, but eventually Christina said that she was a little embarrassed to be seen with me barefooted, so I gave in and let her go on her own. While waiting I had the amusing experience of observing people notice my lack of shoes and attempt to reconcile the bare feet and cheap shorts with a mostly-new jacket and expensive camera. I was a vagrant from the waist down, and on the receiving end of some confused glances.

To shorten an already-too-long recount, we climbed the stairs leading to the gardens and paths that crown the hilltop, walked the garden path that leads to the top, and achieved the summit. There we checked out the spectacular view of town, and the equally impressive Basilique Notre-Dame de Fourvière.

In the evening we had a very nice dinner at Le Winch, again in Rue de Brest. Christina had a fantastic salmon dish, about which she raved throughout the meal, and I had l’entrecote, which was good but did not live up to the standard set in Montpellier.

In the morning we received a pleasant email that one of our requests (Christina’s only, sent last night, amid scads of my own, sent during the past two weeks) for an apartment in Paris had been accepted, so our first priority for the day was getting our train tickets booked. Without going into too much detail, this resulted in having to be at the train station by 6:15AM the next day for departure – practically the middle of the night, according to our recent habits.

Our activities for the second day were dedicated to the other side of the other river, Le Rhône. We brought the wrong map, and were therefore unable to find the market area circled by the TIC lady. We had planned to pick up some provisions there, then pack them off to le Parc de la Tête d’or, the park/zoo area which formed the latter part of our days schedule. Not finding the market didn’t really matter much, in the end, since we were too hungry to wait for the park, and had our lunch at a not-at-all-French cafe in Place de l’Europe. We walked through a very nice part of the city, which we figured to be “the rich people’s part”, since the apartments were clearly carved out of former mansions and still looked quite ostentatious and also were backing right onto this huge and amazing park.

Our entrance to the park was via the Duquense gate on the south side, and we walked through the park and zoo areas, taking some time to see the animals, and exited on the north-west side at the Musée d’Art Contemporain. The park is huge, and the zoo very nicely integrated, with a number of different monkeys, giraffes, a leopard, and some less exotic specimens. Our favorite was the leopard, who was pacing pensively and generally looking like he could stand to kill something.

We took the bus and metro to the top of the terraces at the northern extremity of the “you might want to look at stuff here” part of the map, and descended by foot, through the tight streets and inhabited tunnels (which were not as rustic, or hobbit-like as I had been hoping), and stopping at the viewpoints to take some more panoramic photos (though the best view is still from Fourvière).

Our “dinner” was early and small – a cheese plate and drinks at a cafe near the Saône, since our train bound for Luxembourg will be departing at 6:35AM. We weren’t in such a hurry that we couldn’t have dessert though, so we stopped at a spot on the way back for an assortment of small goodies, which will be our last memory of Lyon. I’m tempted to call this my favorite city in France, but we’ve yet to see the sights of Paris or the beaches of Nice, so I reserve judgement for now!