Arrived in Bratislava

Bratislava, Monday 31 August

Greetings from our final destination: Bratislava! Once again, I should remind my readers that the views in this blog are only mine. They don't reflect official opinions of the Fulbright Commission, the U.S. Department of State, or even Suzanne. Just me!

On Saturday, we drove the 400 or so miles from Padova through Austria to Bratislava. The drive was very pleasant; even the parts of Austria that do not have tall mountains are lovely.

We were also introduced to a new (to us) way to pay tolls---the "vignette"---which will be the norm for us in Central Europe. A vignette is a windshield sticker that one buys upon entering the country that entitles the car to be driven on the country's motorways. It's like tolls-by-subscription. As long as you have a current vignette, you can drive the motorways as much as you want at zero marginal cost. Not terribly efficient from the standpoint of resource allocation, but very efficient for the driver who does not need to stop at toll booths. We bought a 2-month vignette for Austria and a one-year vignette for Slovakia. Before we come home, we will no doubt have vignettes for the Czech Republic and Slovenia on our windshield as well.

After arriving Saturday (on National Uprising Day, a Slovak national holiday), we walked down the hill from our hotel and explored the old city briefly. We found a little, empty restaurant called Attila and sat down for dinner. We found no Huns there, but they did have some excellent vegetarian items on the menu (which had English translations) and a delightful waiter who helped us understand everything we needed to know. Among the highlights were two Slovak cheese that we will enjoy adding to our cheese menu while we are here. One was a rather hard, white cheese not unlike haloumi but presented as a braided set of narrow strings about the gauge of a cell-phone cord. The other was softer little gnocchi-like balls that were almost coated with delicious paprika.

Sunday was a "down day" with nothing special planned. (It was also our 41st wedding anniversary, which we celebrated without ceremony.) In the morning, we found our way to FlipperWash, apparently the only laundromat in Slovakia, and did our accumulated laundry. Then we decided to explore shopping opportunities, looking for something like a Target or Fred Meyer where we could get various food and non-food items that we wanted. We also wanted to start looking for a printer and some windshield-washer fluid for the car. We found success at a "mall" complex in the southern part of the city. A nice little HP printer cost us 70€, an auto supply sold us washer fluid, and Tesco across the way was perfect for everything else (and we could have bought a printer there, too). Tesco in Bratislava is very much like Portland's Fred Meyer stores in size and selection and has a variety of smaller shops and cafés around it much like the jewelry and pharmacy departments at FM. We bought lots of miscellaneous stuff from bread and crackers to printer paper and noted with delight that both of the great cheeses we had at Attila were available there. In the evening, we walked southwest from our hotel to the Hrad, or castle. It was a beautiful evening and there were dozens of people enjoying the view of the city from the castle walls.

Looking west over the old city to the new business district

Looking south over the Danube, with the UFO bridge on the left

Today, Monday, was apartment-hunting day. All of the economic literature on the Slovak labor market highlights the tightness of the apartment market in Bratislava as one of the key reasons that people from Eastern Slovakia (unemployment rate of 20%+) don't move to Bratislava (unemployment rate of 5%) to get jobs. After Communism in the 1990s, state-owned apartments were sold cheaply to their tenants, resulting in a 90% rate of home ownership and few rental units. According to the OECD, a heavy bureaucratic hand has slowed the rate of construction since then, so the market is still really tight. Looking for a fully furnished unit that will accept a 6 month lease further narrows the options.

Our real-estate agent Jakub arranged a viewing of two apartments starting at 2:15 (or 14:15, as we are beginning to say), so we had the morning free. Suzanne went shopping at a tea shop and a craft shop past which we had walked on Sunday; I stayed in the room to write the beginnings of this post. We agreed to meet in front of the Falkensteiner Hotel (an easily visible landmark) at 11:30.

While I was waiting to walk down the hill to join her, an email arrived from Nora Hložeková, the Fulbright coordinator for Slovakia, saying that they had just finished moving into their new headquarters---which turned out to be right around the corner from the Falkensteiner Hotel! After meeting up, we went to introduce ourselves and had a truly lovely and helpful meeting with Nora. She seems to be one of those people who is just on top of everything, with a hundred balls in the air at once but knowing exactly where each one is going to fall. I am very much looking forward to working with her this year as a Fulbright fellow.

Of the two apartments we saw today, we decided that the first is nearly perfect, the only problem being that it is a clear across the city from the university. (It would be like living in Northwest Portland or Beaverton and teaching at Reed, not impossible, but less convenient than Eastmoreland.) It is on the second (third by U.S. reckoning) floor of a new building at the top of a large hill on the northwest side of the city in an area called Karlova Ves. It has a wrap-around balcony that affords nice views toward the city. (Bratislava looks so flat on the map, but it's not!) Until they take the listing down, you can see some photos of the apartment at this site.

The other apartment we saw was in many ways so very appealing. It was the upstairs of a suburban house with the landlord couple (and their rambunctious big dog!) living downstairs. The apartment was very, very nicely furnished and we would have access to their huge garden and pool, but it was even farther away from the university (in the same direction), had access only via a narrow and steep spiral staircase, and we would have basically been living with the lovely landlord couple, sharing the same entrance. Very tempting, but we decided in favor of the more formal place that is closer to the city.

After our apartment search ended with, we hope and assume, success, and we dropped off Jakub in the center of the city (his car broke down today), we found ourselves adjacent to one of the two large American-style shopping malls in Bratislava, as recommended by both Jakub and Nora. We decided to go into the mall (Eurovea Galleria) to see if we could find an English-speaking agent to arrange a cell-phone plan for us. Nora recommended O2, one of the three cell-phone companies serving Slovakia. Thanks to the nice folks at O2, we now have cell-phone service in Slovakia! If you want to make very expensive phone calls to us, I'm at +421 944 404 143 (+421 is the country code) and Suzanne is at +421 944 404 877. But if you should decide to call, don't forget that we are 9 hours ahead of you if you are on the West Coast! Noon Portland time is 9pm (or 21:00) in Bratislava!

So it was a busy but productive day. Many of the nagging uncertainties that have been keeping me awake at night have started to be resolved. Now if I could just speak a little of the language...

In closing, here are a few of random observations about Slovakia and Bratislava from our first two days:

• It's really hard to get around in a country in which you don't know any of the language. While it has been true that most young people and most people in hotels and restaurants speak some English, road signs and stores are for the most part a true mystery. For example, in buying the washer fluid for the car, it took a lot of pantomime and one-word English back-and-forth to make sure that what we were buying should not be diluted with water. We know what we're looking at in grocery stores, but the big signs indicating what is in each aisle are absolutely no help at all! Our fragmentary French and German served us well in France and Germany, and even Italy where many words are similar enough to their French or English counterparts to allow us to figure out what they meant. When we see formaggio in Italian, we know what it means because we know that fromage is cheese in French. But as a Slavic language, Slovak is not similar to any language we know. I'm sure that we will establish a functional vocabulary over time, but right now we are pretty lost.
• I have known for a long time that Europeans often wear "American" t-shirts with the names of colleges or sports teams on them, and that they often get the details totally wrong: University of Harvard or the like. But at the grocery store yesterday I saw one that almost made me burst out laughing. A very heavy, older man was wearing a brown shirt emblazoned with "Chicago Lions," and between the two words, a Green Bay Packers' logo "G." As a lapsed Minnesota Vikings fan, I found it comical that he managed in one shirt to express affinity for all three of the Vikings' divisional rivals: Chicago Bears, Detroit Lions, and the Packers!
• Slovakia is a relatively recent entrant to the European Union, the Euro Zone, and the OECD. Because of its membership in these rich-country clubs, it is easy to forget that its level of development and accumulation of infrastructure are still well behind the richer and longer-established economies of Western Europe. Based on a small sample so far, the condition of the roads and streets seems to be very inconsistent, with lots of potholes on the narrow neighborhood streets. (But of course that doesn't prevent the Slovaks from driving at very high speeds on them!) There are a lot of elegant old buildings near the center of the city that are empty and crumbling. The city seems to be on its way to being a major European capital, but it is not all the way there yet. As a macroeconomist, I'll surely return to this theme in a later economic-related post.

So tomorrow (Tuesday) is another Slovak national holiday: Constitution Day. (Yes, they do have two national holidays three days apart. Presumably the "National Uprising" of 29 August led quickly to the "Constitution" of 1 September?) It is not clear how much of the apartment arrangements can be accomplished on a holiday, but Jakub has promised to go to the office and work on the paperwork. Expect another post late in the week once our housing situation has been resolved and we have a few more experiences to report. 

Viva Italia

Padova, Italy,  Friday 8/28

We left Annecy on Wednesday morning and drove over, under, and through the Alps into Italy. The Alps are quite different than the American Rockies or particularly the Cascades. Steeper slopes and less clear-cutting. Lovely vistas and, of course, castles randomly (probably not, actually, randomly) placed in seemingly inaccessible places on the sides of the mountains.

The Alpine countries are really, really into tunnels, which I guess is a result of the steepness of the slopes. We probably went through ten tunnels in total on this leg of the trip, but the grand champion of the group was the Frejus Tunnel: 13 kilometers (and 40+ euros) under the border between France and Italy. Once out of the Alps, we had a long drive on the Italian autostrada, or motorway.

A couple of comments about the autostrada. First, the authorities are inconsistent in their method of tolling. In some places, you pay a toll every so-many miles (or kilometers). In others, you take a ticket when you get on and pay the appropriate toll when you get off. It is confusing because you never know whether you're going to get a card or pay a toll until you get to the booth.

Second, rules aren't rules in Italy. Lane markings are just a handy guide in case you want to follow them. Speed limits are likewise followed only sometimes. Turn signals are for foreigners, and if you want to keep two lanes available for yourself, you just center yourself on the line until you decide which one you want, which might be a mile to two later. And the typical following distance for some Italian drivers on the autostrada is, oh, maybe one meter.

Third, the route across northern Italy from Torino to Milano toward Venezia is totally industrial. It reminds me of driving Interstate 80 past Chicago and into Indiana and Ohio. There is no scenery, just factories lined up along the highway for hundreds of miles.

We drove past Torino and Milano in our quest to our first Italian stop:

Formaggio Quattro Portoni

As some of you may know, we have fallen in love with an Italian cheese called Casatica di Bufala, a soft water-buffalo-milk cheese we have found both at Cheese Bar and at New Seasons. The last time we were at Cheese Bar, we got more information about the cheese-maker: Quattro Portoni, We drove south of Bergamo to a little town (10,000 population) called Cologno al Serio. I had emailed them on Tuesday telling them that we had enjoyed one of their cheeses very much in Portland, were traveling across northern Italy, and would very much love to taste more of their cheeses and see their farm. A polite reply invited us to stop in the afternoon.

We arrived around 1:30pm, which was mistimed because everything except restaurants, including creameries, is closed from about 12:30 until some time between 2:30 and 4:00. We had an hour to kill before Quattro Portoni's shop (located outside the village) opened, so we decided to explore Cologno al Serio.

What an interesting town! It is a walled village with a moat outside the walls.

Walls of Cologno al Serio with moat and gate

There are four arched entries into the old city, each of which is about one car-lane wide, but cars zip through them, dodging each other and any bikes or pedestrians who happen to be in the way. The name of the creamery literally means "Four Gates" and some of their cheeses are named for the individual gates, for example, Casatica. We went into the old city through the Rocca gate. Looking up on the side of the arch as we passed through, we found a small picture of the Virgin Mary watching everyone who passed in or out.

The  Rocca gate to Cologno al Serio

Looking through the gate into the old town

Virgin Mary watching all who pass through the gate

Inside the town walls is a beautiful, large church with statues of saints all around the sides and two bell-towers, one very large and the other somewhat more modest.

Parish church from the side

Parish church from front

The larger bell tower

We walked around the streets a bit and stopped for some excellent gelato (two big scoops for 1€50 --- Italy is cheaper than France!) before heading back out of town to Quattro Portoni.

We arrived at Quattro Portoni just after their scheduled opening at 2:30, but the door to the shop was locked. One of the employees came out and opened the door. We tried to explain to him who we were and that we had sent a message the day before, but his English was fragmentary. He fetched a co-worker with a bit more English, who then called for the boss, Bruno Gritti, who owns the enterprise with his brother Alfio. Bruno greeted us warmly with better English than his employees and led us to a barn across the courtyard, where he had set up a table with all of his cheeses for us to taste. He offered us wine and water with the cheese and summoned his wife Elena, whose English was quite good. 

We spent an hour with Bruno and Elena, tasting through all of the Quattro Portoni cheeses, sipping wine and water, and asking dozens of questions about their business and how their cheese managed to make it to Portland. (We learned that we were mispronouncing the name of our favorite cheese: it's ka-ZAHT-ee-ka.) They were most gracious hosts, answering our questions (even the dumb ones) patiently in tag-team English: when one was lost for a word the other chimed in and made us understand fully. After tasting the cheeses, Elena took us on a tour to meet the stars of the show: the 1,000 water buffalo they keep out in back. 

They started using water buffalo in response to intense competition in the local market for cow cheese and restrictions on the amount of allowed production. They bought some buffalo from a farmer near Roma who was getting out of the business and soon switched entirely to making buffalo cheese. Buffalo mozzarella is known, and prized, in the United States, though rarely produced there. But Bruno did not stop with mozzarella; he has an entire line of buffalo-milk cheeses, from soft camembert-style to cheeses as hard as the cheddar we know in America. All of them are delicious, and we ended up in the shop buying about 10 pounds of assorted cheese, which Bruno kindly packed in styrofoam with an ice pack to keep it cold. We'll have a challenge keeping it cold on the road for the next few days, but it is such wonderful cheese that we are willingly taking a chance and making all accommodations to try to keep it good. (Frozen peas or carrots from a grocery store make good ice packs!) We left at 3:30 with full stomachs from the tasting, a full case of cheese in the back of the car, and having made a couple of new Italian friends in Bruno and Elena. An experience we wouldn't trade for any we have had on this trip!

One of the barns

Elena and Bruno Gritti

One of the thousand

Yum! This bar tastes great!

Some of the wonderful cheeses in their shop

Cremona

After leaving Quattro Portoni in the afternoon, we drove south to Cremona, home of the great craftsmen who defined the violin in the 16th through 18th centuries. We stayed just one night in Cremona at the Hotel Duomo, just off the cathedral (duomo) square in the center of the city.

Hotel Duomo with restaurant below our room window

The cathedral itself is rather drab on the outside with a hodge-podge of different colors of stone, but it is magnificently and overwhelmingly ornate on the inside, with frescoes competing with mosaics competing with statuary competing with gold leaf everywhere for your eye. On one side wall there is a plaque with all of the bishops of Cremona ... dated going back to 326, but there are ten more before that whose dates are not shown! The bell tower or Torrazzo was of special interest because it pre-dates the convention of the 12-hour dial and clockwise movement. It is an astronomical clock that has four hands, but I wasn't able to figure out how to read it.

Façade of Cremona duomo

Torrazzo/Bell tower

Astronomical clock on Torrazzo

Pictures of interior of duomo

Bishops of Cremona

The Hotel Duomo has a restaurant that, like all restaurants in this part of the world, spills out onto the sidewalk and, because the street is closed to traffic, into the street. We were very hungry about 7:00 after walking around the area. When we walked back down our street, the Metropolitan Caffe right next door (in the distance in the hotel picture above) had dozens of patrons and very few open tables but our hotel restaurant had no customers at all, just three sad-looking waiters hoping for some action. We decided to sit down there and have a light dinner, at least partially because no one is smoking in an empty restaurant!

The food and wine were very good and by the time we left there were lots of diners. By the time we were ready to go to bed directly above the restaurant (outside our window), there were many, many diners and they were making a lot of noise. It was one of those nights that made me glad that I sleep with my time-worn little pillow over my head! And speaking of pillows, the one that the hotel provided screamed Simon and Garfunkel: "I am a rock!" And not a smooth rock, either. Oh well, I was tired and slept well despite the noise and the pillow.

On Thursday morning we headed around the corner to the Museo del Violino, a relatively recently opened museum dedicated to string instruments and the role of the great Cremonesi liutiai: Amati, Guarneri, and Stradivari. This is a modern museum at its best, using modern technology to explain and illustrate how violins are made and discussing what (to the extent that anyone knows) was technically special about the instruments of these revered makers. We learned much about what makes a violin sound the way it does and how they are put together. Then we saw dozens of old instruments from the great makers and all of the winning instruments from their triennial violin- (and viola-, cello-, and bass-) making competition, the next of which starts in September. 

Among the interesting things we learned was that Stradivari's brilliance nearly destroyed the Cremona violin industry in the early 1700s. With the Amati and Guarneri dynasties petering out, no one could compete with Stradivari, so many young luthiers picked up and moved elsewhere, particularly to Milano, where a new school of violin-making dominated the 19th century. The craft did not really take off again in Cremona until 1937, when a major celebration of the bicentennial of Stradivari's death brought the attention of great violin-makers back to Cremona. Now there are nearly 100 violin shops scattered around the city, many in the old, central district. In walking around the cathedral, we passed at least five shops. It seems that the local industry has been reborn. As we approached the end of the museum exhibits, we looked at our watches and discovered that we had spent two hours in the museum without even noticing the time that had passed!

No pictures were allowed in the museum, but we did get this interesting one of a modern sculpture in the courtyard:

Our last stop in our quick tour of Cremona was to try to find the site of Stradivari's workshop. It is now an upscale shopping mall, swarming with locals and tourists. But at least there is a plaque on the wall commemorating the city's most famous and successful citizen. (Well, there were a couple of popes, but how does one compare Heavenly Grace with heavenly music?)

Top: Stradivari plaque on site of his shop.  Bottom: The building that stands there now

Padova

On Wednesday morning we ended our short stay in Cremona and headed northeast to Padova, a famous university town only a few miles from Venice. We arrived exhausted after leaving Cremona in the early afternoon and driving through heavy traffic on the autostrada. All the energy we had for Wednesday evening was a couple of glasses of vino and some munchies in the hotel bar. 

If Stradivari is Cremona's claim to fame, then surely Galileo is Padova's. We are staying at the Hotel Galileo, on the edge of the modern university campus outside the old city walls. Thursday was a long day of walking (19,000 steps!) to and through the old city, seeing the sights, but also exploring residential neighborhoods on our way from Point A to B to C to D and back to the hotel. We started by walking past the university and into one of the gates over the canal and through the walls of the old city.

Our first stop was the justly famous Cappella degli Scrovegni, a chapel attached to the now-demolished palace of Enrico degli Scrovegni, a wealthy financier of the Middle Ages. We were lucky to get in; reservations 72 hours in advance are generally required but they happened to have an opening this morning.

Scrovegni commissioned the painter Giotto to paint frescoes depicting the lives of Mary and Jesus to completely cover the walls and ceiling of the chapel, which he completed in 1305. Of course, photos are not allowed, so I can only provide a couple of external shots and a personal review as someone with little knowledge of art history: They are fabulous! Many parts have been restored beautifully; others remain in weathered and damaged condition. 

To minimize the potential for further environmental damage, visitors now enter in groups of 25 into an "air-lock," where they remain for 15 minutes to allow the air in the room to adapt to the chapel's temperature and humidity. (During this 15 minutes, we got to watch a very informative movie with English sub-titles covering the history and significance of the frescoes.) Then we were allowed into the chapel for 15 minutes while the next group sat in the air-lock.

Two views of the Cappella degli Scrovegni

Adjacent to the Cappella, and admission-free with the same ticket, is the City Museum (Musei Civici di Padova). We spent more than an hour wandering through the exhibits and enjoying the paintings and sculptures. Again, no pictures allowed, so I can't really illustrate the interesting art that we saw.

After a quick lunch, we headed through the old city to the historic university observatory, where Galileo and Copernicus once taught and did their research on the solar system. It is only open once a day for tours and we were not at the right time, so we did not get to enter.

Padova University Obervatory

Later in the day, we walked by Galileo's home on a street now called Via Galilei:

The other "big" site in Padova is the Basilica of Saint Anthony, where the saint's remains lie in an elaborate monument in one of the transepts of the church. Many people were moved to tears by the experience of placing a hand on the back of the monument, and others knelt in prayer at its front. Signs at the entrance to the basilica clearly warned that photography was not allowed, but when we saw priests snapping flash photos, we decided we could get away with a discreet shot or two:

Basilica of St. Anthony

St. Anthony's tomb (in center)

In the piazza outside the basilica is a famous bronze statue by Donatello, another local hero:

Our final stop on the all-day walking tour was at the Botanical Garden of the university, which was originally a research facility searching for plants with curative powers. Now they aim mostly to inform people about ecosystems and to present examples of the kinds of plants that grow in different climatic zones. We thought that the most interesting were these giant water lilies:

After a busy day of walking, we treated ourselves to a nice dinner at the hotel restaurant with a lovely bottle of prosecco from Sorelle Bronca, a winery run by a pair of sisters, which won a recent award for the best prosecco in all of Italy. It was indeed yummy (and a serious bargain at 18€ for the bottle, cold and served at our table).

So tomorrow we are off to our final destination: Bratislava. It is a long drive through Italy and Austria and into Slovakia. We have a hotel booked there for a few nights while we look for more permanent housing. Given that we arrive on a Saturday evening, Sunday will be a sight-seeing day. Then Monday we have an appointment to look at apartments with a real-estate agent. I'll post news when there is some ...

Annecy

Annecy, France,  Tuesday 25 August

We end our 11 days in France with two days in Annecy, a nice little city on the lovely eponymous Alpine lake. Of all of our destinations, this was the only one chosen for the scenery ... so of course it was raining sideways all day yesterday! The weather turned lovely today, though, so we had one nice day to admire the lake and the mountains.

Before we could get to Annecy, we had to get out of Lyon. Even more than most of the cities we have visited, Lyon is a maze of narrow, one-way streets that start and stop without warning. We were counting on our GPS to help us get out of the city, but ... well ... we have the voice in our unit set to "Jill," a sweet Australian female voice that has guided us through many states and countries (only a few times mistaking the WA on Washington road signs for Western Australia). But trying to understand badly pronounced French street names in a thick Australian accent while trying to pick out the microscopic street signs while driving at 20 mph proved too much of a challenge. We missed at least three turns and ended up exploring even more of Lyon's back streets before we finally got on our way. The rain increased as we moved closer to Annecy, near the Swiss border just a few minutes south of Geneva. In fact the town has a strong Swiss influence in the architecture and cuisine.

We arrived at the hotel around noon and parked the car in the two-minute hotel loading zone on the corner in front of the entrance. As I checked in, I inquired about parking. The clerk indicated that they did indeed have parking, but inquired about the size of our car. I showed it to him and he responded, "It might fit." He was exactly correct. It might fit, and it did fit ... with at least an inch to spare on each side! One enters the hotel garage by a passage that is roughly two inches wider than the Volvo. Then one uses the big key to open the garage gate at the end of the passage, then one uses the little key to open one's assigned garage stall. After locking the car, locking the stall, and going back outside the locked garage, I could hardly imagine a more secure environment for our gear --- a marked contrast to the public garage in Lyon the day before!

We managed, with the help of the hotel clerk, to find a restaurant that had heard of vegetables and had a good lunch of fondue and the equivalent of a vegetable pizza. Then, on the advice of the local tourist bureau, we used the rainy early afternoon to explore the Château d'Annecy, a cool old castle that is now a museum with some art (including some modern junk that looked more like a disappointing Reed art thesis than something that should be in a museum) and some science exhibits related to the local fauna and geology. Pretty interesting, but after the wonderful museums of Lyon it was difficult to measure up.

Château d'Annecy

More rain and we were drenched despite our nifty French umbrellas. There is a story here, too: We were walking around the streets of Lyon on Sunday when it began to rain. We watched for a store than might have umbrellas, but most were closed on Sundays, of course. (French storekeepers do not like to be open.) We finally came to a Carrefour City, a smaller version of their supermarkets. Going in, we realized that neither of us knew the French word for umbrella. A young woman was going in just ahead of us shaking out her umbrella, so Suzanne pointed to it and asked in a combination of French and English "What is this?" The woman responded "parapluie," but of course said it fast and we had to ask for a repetition. We were trying to ask whether she knew if they sold them here when she switched to fluent English and said "Let me check," and walked toward the check-out with us in tow. Of course, the parapluies were located right in front of the check-out, so we thanked her profusely and proceeded to examine at least a dozen umbrellas before deciding on just the right ones.

So, back to tramping around Annecy is soggy clothes. What's the perfect thing to do on a rainy day when you're traveling? Laundry! So we found a laundromat within walking distance of the hotel and got all of our clothes clean (except for the two socks that fell out and didn't make it into the washer). Next time we do laundry will be in Bratislava! But Monday evening, the rain had finished and the sun was coming out.

On sunny Tuesday morning we awoke wanting breakfast ... real breakfast ... the kind with eggs. (We miss you Genie's!) We had passed a boulangerie on Monday that advertised omelettes on its outdoor board, so we headed right there. Unfortunately, the omelettes are not available for breakfast! So we trekked another block or two into the old city and found a restaurant that advertised an English breakfast. Runny, but very tasty, scrambled eggs and a plate full of French fries, and of course we skipped the bacon. Heaven!

Well fed, we headed down to the lake for some serious sight-seeing. The people at the tourist bureau had recommended a boat tour of the lake. We jumped on the 11:00 boat and navigated the full length of the banana-shaped lake, past the numerous small villages that line the lake and two more castles in addition to the one in Annecy. Beautiful!

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A nice day of exploration, rest, and relaxation. Tomorrow we leave La Belle France and head south and east into Italy. Three days spread over three locations, so I'll try to post again on Friday from Padova.

Lyon

Lyon, Sunday 23 August

Beaune to Lyon

It was difficult to leave Beaune, a town we grew to love very quickly! But we took the scenic route to the south, traveling through many tiny towns with famous names: Pommard, Volnay, Meursault, Saint Aubin, Chassagne Montrachet, ... Beautiful vineyards roll up the hillsides, many of them designated Grand Cru or Premier Cru. The towns are famous, of course, not because of anything special that the people of the town have done, but just because they happen to be surrounded by the perfect soils for growing pinot noir and chardonnay. Just think, if corn had the caché of wine, then maybe Wadena, Verndale, and Bluffton would be world famous for their Grand Cru cornfields!

Our first stop on the way was at the castle of La Rochepot, right in the midst of the vineyards. An older castle was built in the 13th century and then it was built to its present state in the 15th century by Régnier Pot, chancellor to the Duke of Burgundy. After being largely destroyed in the French Revolution (those revolutionaries were really nasty about anything owned by the nobility or the church!), it was restored at the end of the 19th century by Sadi Carnot, the son of a French president of the same name, and is in beautiful order now. 

Entering the castle: note the chains on the drawbridge

Looking down into the castle interior from the ramparts. Glazed tile roofs are typical of Burgundy.

The well in the garden

Two views of the town of La Rochepot from the castle above

After leaving La Rochepot, we continued south on little roads through tiny towns until we got to Cluny, seat of the all-powerful Abbots of Cluny in the Middle Ages. We arrived there exhausted and hungry, so after finding a parking place and walking into the center of the city, the first priority was a couple of lovely vegetarian galettes and a salad at a little sidewalk cafe near the Abbey. After lunch, we had to assess our situation: well after noon, 12 wonderful bottles of Drouhin sitting in the back of a hot car (no shady parking places), still exhausted though no longer hungry, wanting to get to Lyon before late-afternoon traffic ... all considerations pointed to not taking a couple of hours to explore the ruins of the abbey. Sad, because I've always had a curiosity about the Cluny cult ever since a lunatic Reed job applicant in the early 1990s claimed to be the inheritor of the leadership of the cult!

Arriving in Lyon

We arrived in Lyon mid-afternoon on Friday. We had opted for a hotel that seemed to be very centrally located, one-half block from the River Saône across from St. Jean Cathedral and the old city. Great choice, but not one without costs. Our hotel lies between two unimaginably narrow one-way streets, on which they manage to have a full lane of parking. We drove past the hotel, but there were no open parking spaces. At the end of the block, the street in front of the hotel (Rue de l'Ancienne Préfecture, if you're interested) opens onto the Place des Jacobins. After driving around the Place and adjacent streets for five minutes without a hint of a parking place (Parkers are usually luckier ...) I finally jumped out of the car at a red light (Suzanne was driving) and walked back to the hotel to check in and inquire about parking. Well ... parking is in a three-story (two of them below street level) city lot on the banks of the Saône. It's only a half block away, but leaving our brand new car with lots of wonderful wine and three suitcases in a dubious public parking lot was an act of faith. Alternatively, dragging all of that stuff to the hotel and back was simply not going to happen, not least because we would not have space to put it (see below)!

Online reviews had warned us that this hotel had rooms that were, well, compact. This is true. There is no real floor-space in our room, but the bed is good, the bathroom is functional (if tiny), and there is a little quarter-circle of desk at which I am now writing. The air-conditioning works well, which is good because it has been quite warm here and there is are a couple of nightclubs on the backside of the hotel just below our windows, so open windows are noisy on weekend nights. Another quirk of this hotel is that the elevator stops at the staircase landings between floors, halfway between the first and second, halfway between the second and third, etc. So no matter what floor you are on, you get to haul suitcases up or down a short flight of stairs to your room. Not really a problem, but definitely funky!

We walked across the Saône via the pedestrian bridge at the end of our street, then walked around the Old Lyon district on Friday evening. Old Lyon is a narrow strip of land between the Saône and a high hill behind. Into this strip---about 150 yards deep and maybe a mile long---are crammed the St. Jean Cathedral and it square, and hundreds of houses of the silk brokers and bankers, now of course divided into multiple dwellings. We enjoyed the cathedral, though Gothic cathedrals are no longer a novelty.

In the 14th century, the papacy briefly resided in Lyon before settling further south in Avignon. This particular cathedral suffered a unique sort of war damage: during the religious wars in France, the Protestants used hammers to knock the heads off of all the statues of saints lining the arches above the main doors. Although the Protestants and Catholics have gotten along for three centuries, the heads have not been replaced. We would revisit Old Lyon on a tour on Saturday,

Saturday in Lyon: Tours

A little online research suggested that the Lyon "City Card" was a great bargain, including admission to nearly all museums, free transport on the subways and funiculars, and free access to tours and boat trips on the rivers. On Saturday morning (rather late on Saturday morning ...) we hustled over the the tourist bureau near the hotel, bought a couple of two-day cards, and got booked on two two-hour walking tours around interesting districts of Lyon. Sunday was predicted to be rainy, so we wanted to do outdoor sightseeing on Saturday.

Lyon was, for many centuries, the center of silk production for all of France. Our first tour was of the Croix-Rousse district on a hill north of the central city, which held hundreds of silk-making buildings with four or five floors, tall ceilings, and large windows to let in the light. Master weavers and their apprentices worked the looms inside these windows for all the long hours of sunshine through the day. 

Among the technological advances in the silk industry were the looms invented by Joseph Jacquard, which allowed patterns to be woven into the fabric by means of a punched paper roll not unlike that of a player piano. When rolled across a set of pins, the pins fell into the holes and wove different strands of silk in the places where a hole was present. Hilaire de Chardonnet, another resident of the district, invented "artificial silk," an improved version of which we now know as rayon, which allowed the industry to thrive even as natural silk became scarce.

The final stop of the tour was at L'Atelier de Soierie, a museum branch that uses historical silk weaving and decorating techniques both to demonstrate them and the produce fine silk products that in many cases cannot be produced by modern, automated methods. We got to see actual "silk screening" as originally performed on silk, an actual Jacquard loom and paper roll, and the hand-painting of a velvet-on-silk product of the Jacquard loom. A very interesting tour!

Our tour ended on the square of the Hôtel de Ville (City Hall), where we stopped for lunch.

Hôtel de Ville

Then we crossed the river and walked down the right bank of the Saône back to Old Lyon, where our afternoon walking tour allowed us to see many, many examples of the unique Lyonnaise architecture. Originally, large houses (5-7 stories) were built on parallel streets with adjoining gardens behind each. Eventually, the gardens were sold off to build a third row of houses in between, which did not front on either street. To provide access to these houses, which were built around courtyards in the areas of the old gardens, they built traboules. These are passageways with doors, leading from one street into the courtyard and then out into the other street. The city is a labyrinth of over 400 traboules, which are supposed to be open for public passage (short-cuts!), but are not marked on any map and are sometimes locked by their owners in violation of city policy.

Arches typical of Lyon's architecture: Romanesque, but flattened

Looking up from a courtyard accessed through a traboule

Another courtyard view

The tour was also supposed to go into the cathedral, but we were chased out because of a wedding. Luckily, we had visited on Friday evening so we didn't miss much other than the guide's descriptions.

Although we had both had our fill of touring, one more excursion beckoned in the late afternoon. Lying at the top of the steep hill, just above the great cathedral down below, lies the Basilique Notre-Dame de Fourvière, built in the 19th century to celebrate the divine intervention that allegedly saved the city from being overrun by the Germans during one of their many wars. The two great churches are probably 300 yards apart: 150 yards horizontally and 150 yards vertically!

Basilique de Notre Dame de Fourvière from Old Lyon

We headed up the hill on the city funicular ...

... and when we arrived to the top, we enjoyed a fabulous view out over the city with the evening sun behind us.

Looking toward the modern financial district from Fourvière

Looking down on the cathedral from Fourvière

The Hôtel de Ville and Opera House (looks like an airplane hanger) from Fourvière

After enjoying the view, we went into the basilica to discover they were in the middle of a mass. We stayed in the back through the end of the mass, which was fascinating because we got to hear the wonderful organ and the out-of-tune choir! The inside of the basilica is a riot of decoration, all in perfect condition. (No Protestant damage here!) It seems like every square inch of the interior is covered with ornate art, much of it magnificent. Because the mass was going on, we got to see the altar lighted with (fake) candles, which added to the beauty of the church.

Basilique Notre-Dame de Fourvière: Main entrance

Basilique Notre-Dame de Fourvière: Looking to the front of church

Basilique Notre-Dame de Fourvière: Looking to the back of church

A very full Saturday ended by sliding back down the hill on the funicular and traipsing back across the bridge to our hotel. 

Sunday in Lyon: Museums

Rain had been forecast for Lyon on Sunday, and it duly arrived, though not in great quantities. Anticipating the change in weather (the first real rain since we arrived in Europe almost two weeks ago), we saved the museums for Sunday.

In the morning, we found a suitable selection of breakfast items at a farmer's market on the riverbank near our hotel. An apple pastry and a couple of fried potato fritters were highlights! Then we visited the Musée des Tissus, a museum dedicated to silk artistry. The silk, velvet, and rayon fabrics were wonderful, but the absence of any English translation on the signage (and our lack of understanding of technical terms of sewing, weaving, and cloth design in French) meant that it was mostly looking but not really understanding. We really missed the English-language guides who had explained things so carefully on Saturday! Photography was forbidden in the museum, so no pictures here. You'll just have to take my word that it is a most worthwhile place to visit.

After a pizza and salad on the edge of the huge Bellecour square (with its mounted statue of Louis XIV, photographed on Saturday in the sunshine), ...

... we headed north on the Metro to the Musée des Beaux Artes. Wonderful sculpture and paintings, of course, but also (of great interest to a certain economist) a truly spectacular collection of coins dating from ancient Egypt, Greece, and Rome as well as many centuries of European coins. Our visit was greatly enhanced by the English "audio tour" that provided detailed background on many of the major works of art in the museum. But alas, as with the textile museum, you'll have to take my word for the wonderful exhibits.

So we've finished two very full days in Lyon, and tomorrow we head up into Haute-Savoie and the foothills of the Alps to the city of Annecy, on the banks of Lake Annecy. We have two days there, so I'll try to post again on Tuesday from there.