Kiwi Roaming

Donovan, Paul and Karen and others had all told us we would love Lyon – and other than the temperature we did. It was cold, we wore all of our layers and contemplated a visit to Uniqlo for more on our second day but survived. It was 15-16C! and a wee shock to our systems. But Lyon is also very pretty.

Our hotel was on the sliver of land between the Rhône and Saône rivers called the Presqu’île, which means “almost an island” in French. Parallel with our street was Rue Victor Hugo – someone we have been learning more and more about while in France, with every city naming copious landmarks after him. This wide pedestrian street enabled us to walk quite a few kms between large squares which was awesome. This whole area is lovely, it was initially settled by the Romans for grain storage, then turned into wine producing land for the Bishops before Napoleon’s lot drained the swamp and built a lovely grid structured city.

Out hotel (pics below) was a 2 star boutique one, expensive but functional and in a lovely old building.

We spent 3 days there, day 1 was a mix of exploring and life admin with a trip to the laundromat after the slightly bland hotel breakfast (bread, croissant and yoghurt). Then off to the old city on the right bank of the Saône. Here the streets are narrow with well preserved old buildings. The silk traders built a network of “secret” passages called traboules so they could move between parts of the old city out of site. Many of these are now closed to the public but we followed a few guided tours into these wonderful tunnels which emerge into small courtyards part way through with apartments looming above. Soo cool and unique. We rounded out the evening with more exploring and wine in a square which was lovely but a tad cold for us.

The next day we headed back to the old city and took the funicular up to see the Roman amiptheatre and other ruins and the basilica of Notre Dame both perched high on the hill above the city. Paul and Karen had done the same a couple of weeks ago but didn’t take the funicular and instead walked up “a billion steps”. Even with the assist we still had to walk loads of steps but it was well worth the effort. The Amiptheatre is so well preserved, along with parts of an aqueduct system and water storage cisterns all built well over 2000 years ago. From here we wandered to see the basilica and look at the view again. Steve had read about the Cathedral of John the Baptist and how they had removed all of the glass during WWII so it wasn’t destroyed in the bombing – so even though we had sworn off cathedrals we went and explored and it really was lovely.

There were Camino scallops on the ground outside the cathedral too which was a nice surprise. More exploring involved walking down to La Confluence where the two rivers meet. This is back on the Presqu’île and once we passed the end of the area developed in the 1800’s there was a heap of land with both new apartments and other buildings, and with vacant sites waiting to be developed. After walking though the vacant area and seeing urban meadows planted to encourage bees – right by the city – we got to the Musée des Confluences a futuristic stylised building. It was dusk by now so we walked to the point where the rivers met and took the train back to the town. Dinner tonight was Vietnamese which we did tapas style and loved.

Overall we loved Lyon, it has a great transport system, is pretty clean, the streets are well laid out and great for cycling around the city. There is a good mix of modern and ancient and we enjoyed the style of architecture there. The traboules are quite the find and other than the cobbled streets the old city is lovely to explore. It has a restaurant district which was pricy, but generally we found the food options were fantastic everywhere. As our last place to stay in France we probably should have eaten more French cuisine there but enjoyed everything we tried.

Next stop Barcelona on the TGV again! Too many photos sorry!