Lyon days

Friday May 24th, Lyon France

Walked around and went to the Monoprix store and bought some things. Went to the Art Museum of Lyon which was very nice, but of the same scale as the ones in Florence.A nice collection all the same and had lunch there too.

Work of art in Lyon museum of Beaux Arts (Come Fly with me?)

Moses being presented to the Pharaoh.

Painting on cafeteria wall of Beaux Arts Museum.

The pastry / Viennoiserie in Lyon has some different things I haven't seen before. They have pink colored pralines which Lynne says are probably cashews that have been cooked in some type of sugar with a food dye added to make them pink. Good but nothing super special I thought.

Pastry with the pink pralines prevalent in Lyon. (Pretty but not much substance.)

You want jewelry?

We had a guy singing (really badly) and playing "bad guitar" on the sidewalk below the apartment and luckily for us he stopped singing right at 11pm Lynne said because maybe there was a municipal regulation saying that the area must be quiet after 11pm. Hard to believe from an American perspective that someone would actually pay attention to a rule but they did. We watched Ratatouille on TV in english which was fun.

Saturday May 25th, Lyon France

Chet woke up having a cold bug. (Tried denial first but it didn't work.) We didn't get out out of the apartment until about 11am and we decided to take the fenicular train (A cable car train.) up to the top of the large hill behind us to see the church called Fourviere. The church as really nice stained glass inside and is oddly youthful for France since it was built in about 1865.

Stained glass in the church was really great.

In walking around we saw some interesting sites including the usual carousel you seem to see in every french city and some very interesting Trompe L'Oeuil (House or structure painted with unusual shapes on them to make them look 3D. You've probably seen these done on sidewalks.) They do make for good photos anyway aand the word means "fool the eye".

Carousel in Lyon France

Trompe L'Oeuil on Lyon building

We walked around and we wanted to find a place for true Lyonaise Bouchon food which is the original style of Lyon food. We went to our first choice and it was full so we couldn't get in there. We wandered over to a different place called Leon de Lyon. The people were very nice there and we did have some traditional items such as Quenelle which is a fish souffle made into a sort of tear drop shape and I had Duck with Orange and carrots cooked in honey. And for desert we had an Apple tart which was good.

Peas, beans and bone marrow.

This is a Quenelle. Basically a fish souffle.

Canard Al' Orange

Then we wandered around more looking at the South end of the Isle where the core part of the city lies. After some wandering we found two large Roman Ampitheatres that are still being used today for theatre productions. We saw the actors rehearsing their production of Cyrano De Bergerac. It was cool knowing that we still use these ampitheatres after 2,000 years. Photos below.

Ampitheatre still in use after 2,000 years.

Play that we saw being rehearsed in the Gallo-Roman ampitheatre.

And then finally Lynne saw a silk goods store and so we went in here and saw the merchants very old loom equipment. The equipment was made in about 1805 and was still in working condition. He talked to Lynne and another person there for a long time about the work he does and how he does it. It was very interesting. Lynne got a very nice new scarf there shown below.

Lynne looking very happy with her new Silk scarf.

Silk merchant who told us the building we were staying in is from the 16th century.

Now we are on the TGV train to Paris for the last few days of this trip! High speed rail is nice!..

One other odd thing is we were walking to ride the train and passed 20 tourists who were dressed in orange jumpsuits. These were the kind thing you'd wear in Antartica so you can be seen. Or maybe it was a tour group for people who tend to get lost a lot. I had to laugh though - you'd never get me wearing that at least in the city.

 

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