Loving Lyon

            I love Lyon. It's known as the gastronomic center of France, so who wouldn't want to visit? One of my favorite teachers invited me to drive down with his family this weekend and I did! He and his family picked me up and we left a very snowy Bonneville for a rainy Lyon.
            Every December, Lyon hosts the Fete des Lumieres (look at pictures here!). The city was packed. Fabrice kindly wrote me a tour guide for the day. Lyon is shaped like a Y, divided by the Saone and the Rhone. I started off at in the middle at the Place Bellecour. It's in the trendy shopping district of Lyon. I ambled along the very chic streets and storefronts and found a huge Christmas market (where gifts where purchased, hint hint!). Obviously, I had my favorite vin chaud there after strategically discerning which booth had the longest line and therefore the best VC.

View from the river up to Fourviere!

View from the top! 

            Fabrice then told me to take a furnicular up the Fourviere mountain. I started waiting in the furnicular line. I asked several people if tickets were needed and was assured they were not...I got to the front of the line and was told otherwise. Ignoring everyone's orders not to walk up, I walked. It was like walking up my street at home in San Francisco. The view from the top was worth my sore calves (and was good prep for next week's visit home!).

Roman ruins, photo courtesy of my new Roman friends 

            The cathedrale is at the top and it's beautiful, although under complete restoration so I didn't take pictures. In the St. Just neighborhood, there are Roman ruins! My new Italian friends took a touristy picture of me. I also sat on one of the walls and accidentally kicked the side of it and a stone somehow fell off and oddly ended up in my pocket. So, Cate, a bit of Roman is my suitcase for you.
         

St. Jean

           Pillaging completed, I leisurely walked down the colline to the St. Jean neighborhood, which is nestled at the foot of the mountain. It's full of bookstores, art shops, and restaurants...and traboules. Here's a little history of the traboules. They are basically secret passageways beneath and between city blocks in Vieux Lyon. In Lyon, they were originally used by silk merchants for winter-time transport. They were also used by the French Resistance fights in World War Two!        

Traboules!

            I then crossed the Saone again and went to rue Merciere, which is speckled in traditional lyonnais bouchons. I found one that looked promising and as I was waiting, I heard "Excuse me, are you American?" In a huge city, I somehow manage to run into American assisants like me! Apparently my little North Face hat and coat were a dead giveaway. I had lunch with the girls and it was delicious. We had warm goat cheese toasts with salad and typical lyonnais sausages in a beaujolais sauce. And Beaujolais wine. I then scurried off to the swarming, but free for the day, metro. I took the metro to Part Dieu, which is where Lyon's massive mall and train station are. I shopped at Galeries Lafayette and bought more presents and then caught the last train back to Bonneville.