Month: March 2018

We spent our first few days in Lyon getting oriented to our neighborhood and (for Carrie) getting over a cold.  But by Saturday we were ready to begin exploring the city.  We began with a long, leisurely lunch (that’s the French style) at La Traboulerie, a small indoor/outdoor cafe in the center of Lyon.  La Traboulerie is on Rue Merciere, an old narrow street lined with cafes.  Every place was packed with local couples and families.  We began to learn that people in Lyon love to go out on Saturdays, especially when the weather is good.

After lunch we crossed the footbridge over the Saone and spent the afternoon exploring Vieux Lyon (Old Lyon).  This neighborhood is the oldest in the city and many of the buildings go back to the Middle Ages, although there are ruins on the hillsides that go back to the Romans around the time of Christ.  Vieux Lyon has been designated as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.  It was fun and interesting to walk through these ancient narrow streets.

Vieux Lyon is crisccrossed by narrow walkways called traboules that connect streets and buildings.  They were originally built so the silk workers could transport their goods from building to building without being exposed to the elements.  During World War II the traboules were used as secret passageways by the French Resistance fighters to avoid the Nazis.

On Monday afternoon we took the high speed train to Lyon, only about two hours nonstop from Paris. The French rail system is excellent, far superior to Amtrak. It is fast, smooth, quiet, and comfortable, and trains run regularly throughout the day.

We were met at our apartment in Lyon by our host, Elisabeth, who showed us how to operate the appliances and gave us tips on where to buy groceries and such. The apartment was in a quiet neighborhood away from the hustle and bustle of tourist centers, but it was also just a short walk or bus ride from all of Lyon’s attractions. The apartment was spacious and comfortable and met our needs perfectly.

One of the first things we purchased was a 30-day transportation pass, good for trips on Lyon’s convenient buses, the metro and the trolley. We were assisted by a friendly young college student whose English was very good. He opened our passports and said that the picture of the American flag and the eagle were the most beautiful things he had ever seen, smiling broadly. He said he would like to continue his studies in America when he has a better mastery of English. But, above all, he wanted to visit New Orleans and Seattle.

He then asked us where we were from. Puzzled, we answered “the United States”. He said, no, what are your origins. He guessed that Charlie’s heritage was the British Isles because of his last name. Carrie told him she had mostly German roots. Asking him the same question, he answered that he was from France, with a grin. He looked Middle Eastern, so we said, no! what is your origin. He laughed and said his mom was from Lebanon and his dad was from Morocco.

We grew to love Lyon during our month there. It is a beautiful city at the confluence of two major rivers, the Rhone and the Saone. It has been occupied since around the time of Christ, first by the Romans, but it is also modern in many ways. We especially enjoyed being away from the tourist frenzy of Paris. We rarely encountered other Americans during our wanderings about the city.

We spent our last full day in Paris exploring the Ile de la Cite, one of the oldest parts of the city and home to Notre Dame Cathedral. It was Palm Sunday so we saw a number of people carrying small branches (no palm trees in northern France). We had to pass through a security checkpoint to cross the bridge to the island. The French police and military are very visible around tourist and transportation centers, often carrying potent-looking machine guns. They do a good job of keeping the country safe.

The line to enter Notre Dame was long but it seemed to be moving fast so we took our place in line. In fact, it only took about ten or fifteen minutes to enter the cathedral. The building is spectacular, well worth seeing.

We walked around the Ile de la Cite and found a restaurant with a few small tables on a back street. It was nice to escape the hustle and bustle of Notre Dame. But when we walked around the block after lunch we discovered that we ate at the back patio of a much larger restaurant directly across the street from Notre Dame. So much for avoiding the Paris tourist circuit!

We finished the day by exploring the Conciergerie, a Gothic riverside fortress that was used as a prison by the French revolutionaries in the 18th century. Marie Antionette was held in the prison before she was led off the the Place de la Concorde to be beheaded.

We took the train to Versailles to visit the palace started by Louis XIV in the XVI century. We were herded through the main part of the building with hundreds of other tourists, but we also purchased extra admission to the royal private quarters with the added bonus of a tour guide and a smaller group. We were struck by the restraint of the revolutionaries in not destroying these priceless antiquities.

“Les Invalides, commonly known as Hôtel national des Invalides (The National Residence of the Invalids), is a complex of buildings in Paris containing museums and monuments, all relating to the military history of France, as well as a hospital and a retirement home for war veterans, the building’s original purpose. The buildings house the Musée de l’Armée, and the Dôme des Invalides, a large church with the tombs of some of France’s war heroes, most notably Napoleon Bonaparte. Louis XIV initiated the project by an order dated 24 November 1670, as a home and hospital for aged and unwell soldiers. The museum was created on this site in 1905 and its permanent collections are presented chronologically in ‘historical’ collections representing time periods, from Antiquity to the end of the Second World War, and rounded off with objects belonging to a certain theme (emblems, paintings, military decorations…).”

We spent an afternoon touring the WWI and WWII exhibits: http://www.musee-armee.fr/en/collections/museum-spaces/modern-department-from-louis-xiv-to-napoleon-iii-1643-1870.html

Carrie’s two favorite French yarn stores are in the 13th arrondissement in Paris, La Bien Aimee and L’Oisive The. It was fun to visit a totally non-tourist part of Paris and to speak “yarn” to non-English-speaking yarn-shop owners. Between sign language, squeezing the yarn, and pointing to body parts, lovely yarns were purchased!
https://www.labienaimee.com/
http://www.loisivethe.com/

Both shops are located in the old Butte-aux-Cailles village of Paris. The Butte aux Cailles was annexed into Paris in 1860 and was historically a working class district. It has progressively become a favourite spot for artists and hipsters. Nevertheless it has kept its village atmosphere and has not changed much since 1945 thanks to its narrow cobblestone streets and its lovely houses which cannot be replaced by higher buildings because of the limestone quarries underground.

The Butte aux Cailles: a Must-See Village in Paris

After a day recovering from jet lag, we started seeing the sights of Paris. To get oriented, we walked down the Champs-Elysees to the Louvre. The next day, we toured the Orsay Museum. It was easy to get around with our multi-day transportation passes for the metro and the buses.

The Orsay is a museum in a train station. The history of the museum, of its building is quite unusual. In the centre of Paris on the banks of the Seine, opposite the Tuileries Gardens, the museum was installed in the former Orsay railway station, built for the Universal Exhibition of 1900. So the building itself could be seen as the first “work of art” in the Musee d’Orsay, which displays collections of art from the period 1848 to 1914.
http://www.musee-orsay.fr/en/home.html

We took the Oatman-Topock Road along the previous site of Route 66 over a winding mountain pass. In the old days before there were fuel pumps in cars, some cars would climb the mountain in reverse to guarantee fuel would get to the engine by gravity. We descended on the other side through Oatman, a touristy town where the burros have learned they can roam freely in the streets. It was so crowded with people, we couldn’t park and weren’t interested in mingling with the crowd anyway.

We left Santa Fe today after a 6-week stay. We will miss this place and the neighborhood. There was so much to do and to explore, we would like to return to visit the sights that we missed. Here are a few odds and ends pictures from our stay: