Road Trip to Lyon

 We just got back to Bonneville after a 3 night visit to Lyon, the second largest cultural hub in France (third largest city), settled 2000 years ago by the Romans (at the time, Lugdunum).

This is our apartment (we always take a photo so we remember where we're staying - especially on the first day, after returning from a walk, sometimes we forget :-S).

The apartment (renovated of course) is in an apartment building from the 1700's.  We're down a long "traboule" and one flight up a very narrow circular staircase.  (A "traboule" is a long passageway and apparently used by the resistance during the war to dodge the nazi's.)

We stayed in the old town which is at the bottom of a large hill.  The Bassillica is at the top of the hill, up a long long flight of stairs.  ("Stairs" is a bit of a theme in Lyon as you will see.)

Here is the view from the top.

We visited the "Bassillica", which is a church on top of a church.  The "new" church ...

... is built on top of the "old" church ...

The whole thing is nicknamed the "sleeping elephant", as you will see (I took a pic later on).

On the hillside nearby is an old Roman theatre.

It was built by some rich guy back in the day, with his own money.  We tried to go to a concert while we were there but never made it.

This is what a beehive looks like over here - people build these with the hope of attracting bees.

After the walk, a beer on a nearby patio!

Afterwards we visited the Cathédrale Saint-Jean-Baptiste, home of a 700-year-old clock:

It could track the date, time and the position of the sun and moon as they revolved around the earth, as well as the phases of the moon and catholic holidays.  It's nor working now - it stopped apparently 2 years short of its 698-year cycle - and they will fix it once they are done with the church renovations.

Around the church, more 2000-year-old roman ruins.  They treat these ruins in a pretty cavalier fashion, letting people walk all over them and kids just run around and play.

Day 2 it rained all day!  The forecast was for thunderstorms, which fortunately didn't happen, however it did rain on & off all day, so we did a museum day, visiting the Museum of Fine Arts and the Centre d'histoire de la résistance et de la déportation.

The entrance tickets are works of art unto themselves.

The Museum of Fine Arts had some spectacular exhibits, and the Centre de la Résistance was fascinating.  (In between - while we walked from one to the other, looking for a restaurant for lunch - it started to pour and we ducked into the closest place, a Thai restaurant of all places.)

One of the main tools of the resistance was propaganda (as it was also for the nazis).  This is a one of the early papers published and distributed by the resistance - it mimics the name and style of one of the publications of the Vichy government, but with the news of the resistance.

There were three main publications of the resistance, and the networks they developed to print and distribute the papers helped to build the three main branches of the resistance.  Eventually they merged into a national resistance movement, with support and supplies from (and coordinated activities with) the British.

This is a wireless, used by the resistance ...

... and the code sheet for encoding and decoding messages ...

Nazis loading captured resistance and the jewish population of Lyon into cattle cars to send to the camps.

A printing press used by the resistance, it could be disassembled for transport and to hide.

One frightening aspect of the Nazi occupation of France was the level to which the Vichy government and other collaborators helped and supported the Nazis.  It echos the support for the right wing organizations that is happening today ...

On a lighter note, on our second full day in Lyon we had clear weather so we did more walking and less museum-visiting.

We walked up a bunch more stairs and got a view of Lyon from a different perspective.

There are two rivers that run through Lyon, the Rhone and the Saone.  And about a hundred bridges, even more than Vancouver.  (Vancouver wishes they could have so many bridges.)  (The Nazis demolished pretty much all the bridges of Lyon as they retreated at the end of the war, so they have all been rebuilt since then.)

You can see the Bassillica (the "sleeping elephant") at the top of the hill, to the left, in this photo:

Some Lyon food:

Not in Lyon, but in Aix-les-Baines, on the way home, voted "the best cider in the world":

We stopped in Aix-les-Bains to have a picnic by the lake - the map showed a large park and beach - but when we got there we found it was a "paid" beach, so we huddled in the free area with all the other plebs and ate our sandwiches.

We're now back in Bonneville, and planning our next excursions - tomorrow to Chamonix for one night to visit Mont Blanc, and later in the week to Italy.  Today ... laundry!!!