Day 21: Lyon

I fear that we are about to have a crisis. A clean underwear crisis.

When we booked our accommodation in advance, we tried to ensure that we booked somewhere every 3 or 4 nights that had a washing machine so that we could – you know – wash our clothes.

We have stayed at a couple of places already where we have been able to do a few loads, but sometimes we get caught out.

Like here at Mickael’s place in Lyon.

All indications were that there was a washer, and also a dryer available in the building for a fee.

But it appears that neither of those things is true or correct. Or maybe they were correct in the original listing in French, but the AirBNB translation engine wasn’t as accurate as we could have hoped for.

And to make matters worse, Mickael neglected to mention that he also has a hot water system hanging from the ceiling, right above the toilet.

Sigh. I’m going to have to hang on now until Nimes and hope for the best.

In any case, we are running out of clean clothes and clean underwear.

First world problems.

We are staying here in Mickael’s AirBNB in Lyon for just the 2 nights. While a 5 week driving holiday seems like a long time, the fact is that we have lots of places that we want to go to and see, so we are a little bit limited in how long we can stay in any one place.

Some places where we want to stay a little longer and enjoy the township – or do some driving to nearby townships – we are staying 3 or 4 nights.

But only 2 nights in Lyon. We are staying in a small apartment at 15 Rue du Professeur Pierre Victor Galtier, Villeurbanne, which is one heck of a return address to have to write when you are posting a letter.

After a bit of a stressful day on the roads around Lyon yesterday, it was nice to leave Claude in the basement 2 garage and play bus ninjas for the day today.

We had a walking tour booked for today at 10.30, starting at the Place des Terreaux. It was some way away from where we are staying – maybe 4 or 5 km as the crow flies, so way too far to walk.

We downloaded the local public transportation app – TCL – and tried to figure out how best we could get from home to the Place des Terreaux. Bus with a little bit of walking seemed to be the answer, and we elected to get the 24 hour unlimited ticket for €6.90, even though we figured that we really only needed to buy a ticket there and a ticket return (2 x €2.50).

One of the things that is good about getting older is the stuff that you learn along the way. Experience.

And experience tells me that while we only need a ticket there and a ticket back, we are going to find ourselves on a wrong bus somewhere and need to do a come-around.

I mean, it happened on the toll road coming into Lyon, so it will probably happen on the bus as well.

So we splurged and bought the all day tickets. And I’m glad that we did.

We bought our tickets, loaded them onto the app, then walked down to the local bus stop to catch the C3 bus. We confirmed with the bus driver that we were in fact heading in the correct direction to get to the Place des Thereaux, and that this was the correct bus.

After a couple of stops, he beckoned us forward and pointed around the corner saying “cinq huit”, which I seem to recall is a couple of numbers, but I can’t remember which ones.

In any case, after a bit of bus ninja-ing, we found ourselves at the desired location, 45 minutes ahead of schedule.

Mickael – bless his cotton socks – has provided us with a coffee machine in the apartment, but the coffee tastes like no coffee I’ve ever had in my life.

It’s pretty bad, and I have a fairly high tolerance for bad coffee.

So we needed to get a decent brew. MBW refuses to get coffee at any establishment that has less than 4.5 stars on Google, so there was a bit of walking around trying to find a coffee shop.

We eventually found a boulangerie – have I mentioned how much we love boulangeries? – and got two coffees and an almond croissant because … well, because you just never know.

My mate Jack Reacher will tell you that you should always eat when you can … so we ate.

Coffee was good, and the almond croissant was fabulous. God bless the French.

We were still early for our walking tour, so we made a video call to one of our Daughters-in-law, Alicia.

Hugo – our walking tour guide – arrived and we set off with a group of about 10 to see the sights and hear the history of Lyon.

I confess to being a bit confused by Hugo. His English was much better than my French, but he was very hard to understand. I confess that I paid way too much attention to his moustache which he appears to dye orange to hide the grey, so perhaps I wasn’t listening as closely as I could (or should) have been.

For the first 30 minutes of the tour he took us up more and more staircases towards the top of a hill, which is good practice for when we get to Italy and climb the 400+ steps of some dome that we were told was a “must do”. And we have to pay for that experience too.

He kept talking about the “walking classes”. The walking classes moved their machines, and the walking classes did whatever … and I wasn’t sure if that had something to do with a walking tour.

And it finally occurred to me that the “walking classes” were in fact the “working classes”, and it all suddenly made sense.

We saw some Roman ruins that dated back to the 3rd century, and we saw buildings that had painted windows because – back in the day – you were taxed for each window that you had, so people wanted to appear to have more windows than they really did.

And they wanted to pay less tax than they had to.

We crossed the Rhone (river) into the old town (Vieux Lyon) and did a wander around there. I’m not even going to try to recall all of the things and places that we saw, but the photos below show the story.

We also learned about traboules. These are public/private passageways between buildings that were often used to move horses between buildings. Sometimes the rich used them so that they wouldn’t need to see the peasants.

Editor’s note: MBW tells me that she thought Hugo said that the original purpose of a traboule was to assist the owners to transport water to their home. If you have an opinion on this topic, please feel free to share it.

It’s not always obvious where to find a traboule, because they are just a plain door that looks like a regular building front door – but isn’t.

After the walking tour, Hugo gave us some suggestions for further things that we could do by ourselves, and some recommendations for what/where to eat.

It was close to 12.30pm by this time and we were getting peckish, so we found a little restaurant that met our criteria (ie it had lots of customers in it), and we went in and ordered.

It isn’t uncommon here that you can order anything from a set menu (cheaper, but you don’t get any options), a set menu with limited options (a bit more expensive, but more choice), or a la carte menu.

We chose the 2nd option because we got to choose from the things that we wanted to try anyway, and it was cheaper than buying the items individually off the a la carte menu.

We both had the Salad Lyonaise for starters and it was really good. Like a Caeser salad, but with chuncks of pork and croutons over a salad with a soft boiled egg.

For mains, MBW had a quenelle ( a type of souffle with lobster bisque – a traditional meal here in Lyon), while I had a chicken surpreme. To be honest, I was half expecting a Domino’s pizza to come out, but I was pleasantly surprised with a quarter roast chicken in a mushroom sauce, with gratin dauphinois (like a potato gratin).

So, so good.

And for desert MBW had a praline tart, while I had the chocolate mousse.

A really yummy, and a really filling meal that will keep us going for the day and means that we won’t need dinner tonight.

After lunch we needed to walk, so we headed up the road to the finicular so we could go up the hill to see the Basilique Notre-Dame de Fourvière, a beautiful old bassilica that sits at the top of the hill and provides breathtaking views over Lyon.

We caught the finicular half way up so that we could stop and look at some Roman ruins which dated back to 20BC. I find that quite mind-boggling.

We walked the rest of the way up the hill to the basillica and admired the views, and went inside and were astonished by the intricate detail of the interior.

We took the finicular back down to the old town (Vieux Lyon) and wandered around some more. As you would expect, the roads and laneways of the old town are all cobblestone, and while I am sure that they were the latest tech several hundred years ago, they are just hard work for us softies walking on them all day – they really take a toll on your feet and legs.

Lucky I wasn’t wearing high heels!

By now it was mid-afternoon and we played bus ninjas again, catching a bus to the local markets just to have a poke around. We looked (and taste-tested) various products from a patisserie, plus we looked at a selection of cheeses and wines.

We bought some fruit to ensure we stay regular and don’t get scurvy.

Back on the bus towards home, and we were back by 6.00pm.

My impression of Lyon is that it is a very pretty city with some amazing history and gastromony, and some really spectacular buildings and monuments.

According to Wikipedia – the source of all truth and knowledge – Lyon has a population something above 500,000, yet the city is also very smoggy and quite dirty – lots of graffiti and rubbish lying around … which is a shame because it is such a lovely place with such a rich history.

I can see why they have a low emission requirement in place.

But we have had a great time here in Lyon.

Tomorrow we are off to Nimes.

That trip will be one of our “toll road” days. Google Maps suggests that the trip of approximately 250km is 2.5 hours with toll roads, and almost 5 hours without tolls. Plus there are lots of things that we want to drive and see around Nimes so we want to get there sooner rather than later.

Kate (our host for the next few nights) has messaged to say that we can get in from 2.00pm, so we will get up and get going early, find somewhere pretty to stop on the way for lunch, and get into Nimes as early as we can.

That will be tomorrow’s adventure.

Now, which pair of undies can I get another day out of … ?

Ciao

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