If you remember back to this fateful Wednesday in April, it was the day that all the flights in Europe started because of that silly Icelandic volcano. Thankfully, I didn’t have any issues getting out of Rome, but I’m pretty sure flights started being canceled later that day. Yikes! However, made it into Lyon without any problems except for the fact that we were exhausted. When we got off our metro stop, we realized that we had a loooong uphill hike ahead of us to get to the hostel. With our packs full of two weeks of vacation, we struggled making it up. When we checked into the hostel, we were hit by yet another surprise—we needed to buy Hostelling International Membership Cards…ouch. Thankfully, Lyon is the gastronomic capital of France, so we were in the right place to eat our cares away—which is exactly what we did. A typical Lyonais bistro is called a “bouchon”. I still don’t really know why, because everywhere else that means traffic jam, but we’ll go with it. I had a delicious salad with walnuts and gruyere cheese, filet de colin (a white fish) with rice and tomato sauce, and topped it all off with some delicious mousse au chocolate. Yummm. Sadie let me sample bites of her meal, too. Dang, she can pick ‘em. Her French onion soup, steak, and gratin dauphinois was out of this world! Needless to say, we went away feeling very satisfied. We stopped by the Cathédrale Saint Jean as we wandered through Vieux Lyon.
It’s a really beautiful medieval church with amazing stained glass and the most incredible astrological clock I’ve seen. It still works! We wandered a bit through Vieux Lyon, which is seriously adorable, toward the river (Saône) so we could find the Fresque des Lyonais. Lyon is famous for its random immense wall murals. When I say there’s a really cool fresco on the side of some random building in Lyon, it doesn’t sound all that cool, but in reality it is. Promise. It’s painted to look like it’s part of the building it’s on, and there are all sorts of famous people from Lyon and French history hanging out on all of the balconies. When we were done admiring the fresco, we wandered over towards Place Terreaux, which is kind of like the Grand Place of Lyon.
There is a super cool fountain there that was designed by the same guy who did the Statue of Liberty. As we were sitting by the fountain, a random Tunisian guy started talking to me because he heard me speaking English with Sadie and he kept talking about how great America is and it was a little uncomfortable. I kept trying to say, “you know, America has problems, too! Life isn’t perfect for everyone!” and he wouldn’t have any of it. Traveling as an American is really awkward at times. It often makes me want to tell people I’m Canadian. They’re less polarizing. Anyway, once we got rid of that guy, we wandered up to the Croix Rousse district, which is supposed to be kind of artsy. It was pretty cool, but I wish we could have gone to the market there. The one thing that we did see was another one of the frescos—the Mur des Canauts (Silkweavers’ Wall). Lyon has a long textile history and it used to be famous for its silk. The fresco was really cool—it was more realistic than the other one because all of the people were from the same time period. By this point, it had started to drizzle a bit, so we headed back to our hostel to relax for a little bit before dinner. We took the furnicular up the hill this time, which was an experience all its own. It’s kind of like a cable car that only goes uphils and the car was all tiered. Quite interesting. We originally planned to go out for sushi and a drink, but by the time we were done with our sushi at Matsuki, we were too tired for a drink. We went back to the hostel and quietly got ready for bed because two of our roommates were already asleep. Around midnight, as Sadie and I were about to fall asleep, some Asian lady and her daughter burst into the room and turned all of the lights on. I happened to be standing at the sink taking my contacts out, because I had almost forgotten to, and I very quietly tried to tell them which beds were open and that they should turn off the lights because some of the girls were asleep, but there must have been some sort of communication lapse because they proceeded to turn on more lights and I listened to them noisily sort through their twelve plastic bags through my iPod as I tried to fall asleep—not exactly my idea of a lullaby.
The next morning, we got some breakfast at our hostel, then headed up to see the Basilique de Notre Dame, which looms on a hill over Lyon. The mosaics inside were pretty incredible, and the views from the hill couldn’t be beat!
When we were done there, we headed down the hill a bit to the ancient Théâtre Romain. It wasn’t the Coliseum, but it was still really cool. I read somewhere that in the summer, there are sometimes concerts there. How sweet is that? As we continued down the hill, we stopped at the hostel to get our bags, then went through the traboules of Vieux Lyon. The traboules are passages between buildings that were originally used for silk trade to protect the fabric in rainy weather, but they were also used in WWII by the resistance fighters. We only went through a couple of them, but apparently they go all through the city. While we were in Vieux Lyon, we stopped at a Petit Casino and a boulangerie to gather some supplies for our train lunch feast of baguette, salami, cheese, fruit, etc. mmmm.
We headed to the train station to find that our train was no longer listed. Cool. The SNCF decided to strike during two of the busiest weeks of the year, so the station was MADNESS. We were supposed to take a TER, but we asked at information, and the lady told us to just get on the TGV an hour and a half later. Okay? So instead of having a train feast, we ended up with a train station feast. When we finally got on the train, it was crazy. There was no room because all the people who were supposed to take the TER were on the TGV without reserved places, so I sat on the floor of the train…next to the bathroom…yum. We changed trains in Dijon and had originally planned visiting the city for a little bit, but we were pretty worn out, so that was a no go. Sadie had a cold, too, and was feeling pretty gross at this point. When we finally got to Reims, we went straight to our hostel, which was SO nice! I couldn’t believe how awesome it was for 12 Euro per night! We had a private room with sink and shower, so we lounged for a bit before going out around 10 to pick up a pizza for dinner. Lazy night, but it was necessary at this point in our trip.
The next morning, we headed out towards the champagne caves to do a tour of the Pommery. Our tour was pretty awesome! We went all through the caves, learned about how champagne is made, found out what makes certain types of champagne different, and got to taste some at the end of our tour.
After the tour, we headed over to the Basilique St. Rémi, which is where St. Rémi, the bishop who baptized Clovis (the first king of France), is entombed. Basically, we were having a French History geek field day. Then, we went back towards town to grab a sandwich for lunch and see the Cathédrale Notre Dame de Reims. I know that this means nothing to anyone who doesn’t know much about French History, so I’ll keep it brief.
This is the cathedral where all of the coronations of the kings of France took place because it’s also where Clovis was baptized. For the religious, Joan of Arc stood beside Charles V in this cathedral as he re-took the French throne after the Hundred Years War. We still had a lot of time to kill after we saw the church, so we went through the Beaux-Arts museum. I’m actually really glad we did, because it’s a really good museum. It’s kind of funny, because the main reason I wanted to go was to see the painting The Death of Marat, but after we went through the whole museum we found out that it was on loan to another museum. Shucks! But it was all good because they had a ton of really awesome impressionist works, which is my favorite! Once we were done with the museum, it was time to make our way to the train station (which we actually had to go WAY out of Reims to get to…debocle), and go home to Lille! It was a really good trip, and I’m really glad we got to see some more of France. Lyon is now my favorite city in France, but I think Reims was especially important to visit because of the rich history there, which we should appreciate as French students. Very enjoyable trip, but it’s good to be stationary back in Lille! :-)
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