Off to Lyon, home of Paul Bocuse and some giraffes

When I looked up Lyon as I was planning our trip, I noted that there would be good food and Roman ruins. We found both but did not expect giraffes.

The train trip to Lyon was uneventful. It took about 4 hours to travel 500 Kms. We stopped in Dijon for a moment, but I’ll get to Dijon much later in the story. Our hotel was an apartment studio across the street from Westfield. I wasn’t excited about that part until I saw the size of Westfield, a giant mall (still growing in fact), owned by a UK company (which explains the name), containing 60 restaurants, as well as numerous stores. But frankly, that wasn’t the good food I had anticipated and we only bought some groceries there to cook ourselves.

If you recall, a war had recently broken out in the Middle East (Iran) and Leon was on alert when we deboarded the train and were told to move quickly to leave the station. Ok… Our studio was well located. 4th floor, across from the huge mall, right beside the Paul Bocuse Center, and most importantly, nestled high up top close to the trees where the local birds were nesting. Squawk, Squawk! The frequent welcome from the locals, I guess.

On the first night, I was hoping to get a good sleep (as it had eluded me so far during this trip), when the fire alarm went off around 9pm. Leon was asleep already and it took me long enough to sort out what was happening to see all the neighbours stand outside (4 floors below our window and the bird nests), get us both dressed and at the staircase, just in time for the neighbours to be coming back into their apartments. Oh well. Sleep eluded me some more.

On day 2, we started with a visit to Les Halles Paul Bocuse, a swanky food court, to say the least. I was most impressed with the chocolate stalls, works of art! It was too early for wine and lunch, so we settled on coffee and a pastry for Leon. We had many good coffees during this European trip, so I won’t stop to compare. This was more about the prestige of eating in this gourmet/artisan food market.

We then took a very long walk to explore parts of the city. We ended up at Tête d’Or, a sprawling park with a lake, much like NYC’s Central Park, I suppose. There was a fun grouping of statues that represented comical cats, from illustrator Philippe Gerluck. As we walked further, around the lake, we discovered the zoo. I didn’t realized it was open, but low and behold, giraffes, flamingos, pelicans and a few other land animals were outside and willing to be photographed. On the way back to the studio, I managed to source a good sized meringue as my pastry treat. The weather was getting wet and cold so we had a quiet night in, with me cooking something not very memorable.

Day 3, finally a chance to explore across the Rhone where the older part of Lyon is found. We crossed some bridges, and by the way, I was just getting used to looking in all directions at all times because bicycles have the right of way in many European cities now. I almost got run over or caused an accident a few times during our travels. Luckily I never got hit by a train, but now I’m giving away the next part of the story.

So we took the funicular up to the top of the old town, then walked down to where the Roman ruins could be found. They are over 2000 years old. It was raining full on by the time we got inside the free museum. Afterwards, we stopped for a late lunch and I had a really, really good salad.

The next morning, we were up early to get on the train to Aix-en-Provence. I didn’t know why we were headed there but I figured any place with the name Provence had to be good.