Lyon and Beyond

We all slept very soundly last night and woke up ready to go around 6:00-7:00. We had a nice breakfast at our hotel. I had fruit salad, boiled ham, and a delicious pastry made of puff pastry with an apple filling. Beth and I had green tea with jasmine, and the guys had coffee with milk (THREE mugs in Matt's case).

After breakfast we checked out, stored our luggage, and went sightseeing.

We started in the shopping district downtown, as Beth needed a little purse to carry her camera and chapstick. We lucked out and found exactly the right purse at the first store we stopped at (H&M), and it was on sale for 5 euros.

Next, we walked toward the Cathedral Saint Jean. On the way, we passed the Theater Celestine:



And went over this footbridge:



The cathedral was lovely:



(Note: I don't actually have photos of a lot of the things we saw, because I learned years ago to just buy postcards--they take much better photos. Since I don't have a scanner with me, you'll have to look up your own photos online.)

We took a funicular ride up the hill to the Fourviere Basilica. A bunch of small children were on the funicular with us, and every time the driver turned the lights off they oohed and aahed. Very funny!







The floor of the basilica was completely covered in mosaics:




The Roman Theater was the next stop. The ruins were juxtaposed with a very modern sound and light system being set up for some event.



We walked down the hill, and stopped for lunch at the first restaurant we saw, Les Lyonnaise Bouchon. We had Le Menu: the first course was sausage or terrine, the second was duck or tuna (we all passed on the carpaccio), and the dessert was strawberries on a cream puff or a traditional praline tart (I have no idea why the tart was red). Everything was delicious, and we were all stuffed.




Next we walked across the rivers and went to Les Halles de Lyon, a lovely indoor market. We bought dinner fixings there: baguettes, Camembert, and some macarons.

We tried to take the bus back to the hotel, but were told it was out out of service, so we decided to take a cab.

Back at the hotel, we finally got in touch with a grad school friend of ours who lives in Australia. He was in Lyon for the SMBE meetings, as were the rest of John's colleagues that we kept bumping into all around Lyon. We had a drink at a cafe, and chatted for a while.




The train station was a little bit too exciting. After a long wait, our departure platform showed up on the board, so we went up to platform E and waited. And waited. There were a bunch of announcements in French that we didn't understand: I remember hearing one announcement that mentioned our destination (Dijon Ville), but didn't think anything of it until a different train pulled up at our platform. The SNCF conductor told us ours would be the next train (there were several other people there, too), but then discovered that our train had been moved to platform C (the mystery announcement) and was about to leave!!! We were REALLY glad to be only traveling with one backpack each, as we had to sprint down the ramp and up the next escalator to make our train. I am clearly getting old--even Beth was able to outrun me. (I figured John wouldn't let the train leave without me, especially since I had the tickets.)

We are now on the train in our little sleeper compartment. The kids are in a separate compartment down the hall. I'm really glad I packed a roll of toilet paper, because the WCs don't have any!