October 12, 2021
Rest day in Lyon
Ah, a true zero day at long last! We did it right. First we headed to the local boulangerie for some brioches aux pralines and coffee:
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Then we went to the subway station just in front of our hotel, bought day passes, and headed to the Théâtre Gallo Romain de Lyon. This involved a subway transfer and a short trip on one of two funiculars:
The site itself is grand in scale, yet represents only a fraction of the seating that was actually built. It was originally an 11,000-seat amphitheater!
From there it was a short walk to La Basilique Notre Dame de Fourvière, which was the highlight of my day. Stunningly beautiful both inside and out, heavily adorned with detailed mosaic art:
Flaunting our day pass, we hopped on the other funicular back down the hill:
We visited the Cathédrale Saint-Jean-Baptiste, which was impressive, but looked kind of austere compared to the basilica. It also buzzed with a different kind of energy -- a little more, how should I put it -- secular?
The cathedral houses a cool astronomical clock, which appears to be under repair at the moment:
We were getting ready to leave when I noticed a doorway leading to the cathedral treasury. What, a treasury? Is this the Federal Reserve? Ah yes, of course a seat of religious power is going to receive and retain valuable items over the course of centuries. It's nice of them to house a museum for anyone to visit free of charge. Many of the items date back to the Middle Ages. You can imagine a priest or bishop using these items ritually for decades, gaining patina from human touch, and being passed to the next in succession, until they are simultaneously pieces of art, history, and piety. I couldn't bring myself to photograph them. I had no such qualms about this item, which looks like it was kept away from prying (praying?) hands:
We walked aimlessly around the old city for a while. It was cold, cloudy, and windy. We soon found ourselves seeking shelter. We decided to head to a nearby Decathlon to look at bike and camping stuff. This was a "City" Decathlon, which had a much smaller selection of items for sale. A visit to a "real" Decathlon was in order, but first, time to do something about our growling stomachs. There was a cluster of Asian restaurants on the map, and much to my delight, many of their menus had two or three vegetarian items prominently displayed. We were after phở, but what we got was phad thai and something that resembled phở but was seriously lacking in broth. The veggie phở wasn't veggie after all, and I want to thank our server for pointing that out before I ordered. Anyway, we were happy enough with our second experience eating out in France.
We took the tram to a big shopping mall in Part-Dieu, got lost, found the Decathlon, had success finding some biking attire Sunyoung needed to replace worn items, then got lost again trying to leave the mall. We decided to take the tram to the end of the line to a place called Plaine des Orchidées, which sounded dreamy, but turned out to be just a grassy and shrubby area. We've seen our share of grass and shrubs over the course of the last month, thanks very much.
Last tourist stop of the day was the Place Bellecour. It is a very large plaza. However, it doesn't have anything to give it character except a statue of Louis XIV, which is supposed to be a big deal. What do you think, dear reader?
There is one other thing the plaza has going for it: a nice view of the basilica up on the hill!
A visit to a nearby boulangerie for a tart and coffee bookended the day quite nicely. Since then, we've just been hanging out in the hotel, taking advantage of the kitchenette one last time, and at least thinking about packing for the next stage of the tour.
Lyon is a very pleasant and manageable city to navigate. It's not too quiet nor too crowded. It's clean. The population is diverse but no one group seems to be ghettoized or excluded from participating fully in civic life. A good indicator that a city is functioning well is that even the busy people are kind and helpful. I witness that here. There is homelessness and poverty, but nothing of the magnitude we see in our similarly-sized city of Seattle. I'm glad we were able to spend some time here, and not just because we really needed a day off the bikes!
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