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.