20240606 Thursday, June 6, 2024; D-Day in Lyon
It's a good thing we opted out of the breakfasts at this apartment hotel. The breakfast buffet looked pretty mediocre. There are so many restaurants just outside and even one that specializes in waffles and omelets just around the corner.
This was a pretty low key day for sleeping in and doing a little exploring around Lyon. We took a stroll north, encountering the St. Nizier Cathedral. Ben thought at first that it was odd they had a clock behind the main altar, but on closer inspection, it was a tapestry of the Holy Spirit in dove form instead.
Further north we found the place de Terreaux, which features the Fontaine Bartholdi in the middle of an open plaza bounded by the Hôtel de Ville (city hall) and Musée de Beaux-Arts (Museum of Fine Arts).
We didn’t feel like spending a whole day in the fine arts museum so we just took a stroll through their sculpture garden which is in the courtyard in the middle of the building where they have several Rodin and other sculptures. They also had some very nice museum guides that provided information on objects with various themes such as objects of music, heroes, sculptures and antiquities. Unfortunately, they were all in French only so we had to rely on Google translate to be able to read them. You could pretty much tour the museum virtually by just reading through the guides.
As we walked back to the apartment we stopped for pizza along one of the many narrow streets lined with sidewalk cafes and restaurants. This particular restaurant, Figlia, offered a pizza of the day which was a blanca pizza with nuts and figs in addition to cheeses. It was interesting, and a decent enough pizza, although the crust was a bit flimsy in the center, necessitating eating with a fork and knife. But in France, that’s perfectly acceptable. The pizza we had in Paris off the Trocadero was better but this made a good lunch. We saw several other Bouchon Lyonnaise restaurants in that neighborhood that looked like they would be as much fun as the one we found in Old Lyon. The association of marionettes with this style of restaurant is interesting.
Having had beer with the pizza, we took naps after lunch before heading back out the door for more exploration, this time to the south. We wandered across place de Jacobins, which has a central fountain with sirens squeezing water out of fish around 4 son’s of Lyon, all artists dating from between the 16th and 19th centuries in their respective costumes from the times. It was completed in 1885. There are 12 streets that converge on this square so many of the buildings assume triangular configurations as they point into the square.
Continuing further south we ended up at the Place Bellecour, a very large rectangular square with very little aside from a lonely statue of Louis XIV riding a horse in the center of the square. It is apparently one of the largest open pedestrian squares in Europe.
There is an art gallery and tourist information office on the square. Off to the southwest corner of the park is a statue of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, author of “The Little Prince” and many other books. He is seated atop a tall marble column with the Little Prince on his shoulder.
He was born in Lyon and disappeared somewhat mysteriously in 1944. It is believed he was on a reconnaissance mission from Corsica over the Mediterranean. Although the wreckage of his plane was eventually discovered off the coast of Marseille in 2000, the circumstances remain a mystery. On one side of the column is a quote from one of his works “I will look like I’m dead, and it won’t be true”. On the opposite side is another quote “To be a man is precisely to be responsible. It is by laying down our stone that we are building the world”.
A building on the square had a plaque on it stating that during WWII the Nazis used Lyon as a central base of operations and that the Gestapo had used that building to torture allied partisans, but that a network of secret underground passages allowed the French resistance to operate right under the Nazi’s noses.
From there we headed cross another pedestrian suspension bridge over the Saône river by St. George’s Cathedral.
Our apartment hotel is situated centrally on the peninsula bounded by the confluence of the Saône and Rhône rivers and is called the Presqu’île. Lyon was the capital of the Gauls during the Roman Empire. Old Lyon, which lies on the right bank of the Saône river, is considered one of the finest remaining examples of Renaissance architecture in Europe today. Lyon was a center for the production and weaving of silk, and much later in its history, Lyon became the birthplace of modern cinema since Auguste and Louis Lumiére invented the cinematograph in Lyon.
As we wandered through the back streets of Old Lyon, we encountered the funicular station where you can ride to the top of hill where the place de Fourviére and Basilique Notre-Dame de Fourviére and the remnants of several large Roman era amphitheaters are. It began to sprinkle rain on us so we headed back home to our apartment hotel from there.
Eventually, our stomachs reminded us that it was dinner time, albeit French dinner time which is 7:30pm. Janet had a hankering for a hamburger and fries so we ended up at a nearby place called Big Ferdinand’s. They did have a special with a smash burger and fries which we ordered with a Coke Zero and beer. The burgers were more whopper jr sized but they did come with a health serving of fries. Still €27 for 2 burgers, fries and drinks isn’t exactly a cheap meal.
After eating at Big Ferdinand’s, we wandered around a new neighborhood to the east and found some very wide pedestrian boulevards and expensive store fronts. We eventually found ourselves back at Place Bellecour, and then back to our apartment hotel. We did get sporadically sprinkled on, and heard a rare rumble of distant thunder, so we probably got back indoors at a good time. The apartment hotel does have umbrellas in the foyer that we can borrow, so that is a nice touch.
Tomorrow, John arrives at the Lyon Airport, which is a 48 minute subway rail line ride from Place Bellecour. He won’t be leaving until after work, so he’ll arrive here in Lyon about sunset. We’ll probably do some more wandering through neighborhoods tomorrow.
