A Day in Lyon

I rarely explore different public transport options in the cities I visit, preferring to travel everywhere by foot. I think I developed this habit in places where I did not understand the local language and where the threat of getting lost seemed much more real and potent. There was something about Lyon’s public transport system, however, that won me over. Accidentally walking into Perrache Station yesterday, I noticed the shallow tram channel, the unthreatening walk across the tracks, and the simple turnstiles behind which the metro zoomed to and fro, turning transfers into a matter of seconds. Enamoured with the ease of everything, I bought a 48 hour all purpose ticket for the entire city.

This morning, I gratefully remembered yesterday’s me for this purchase. The walk to the centre would have been long, and the climb up the hill to the basilica exhausting. Instead, I got to enjoy a whole tasting menu of different modes of public transport: the bus, the metro, and even the cable car. Having taken the tram yesterday – and, I suppose, the train into town – I have therefore completed the Big Five or Pentateuch of Lyon’s public transport in a matter of 24 hours.

I arrived at the Notre Dame Basilica just as mass was starting, so I could not walk around much or take pictures. Deciding that I would return later in the day, I continued to the nearby Amphitheatre. It was around half past nine and only a few tourists had so far graced the ruins with their presence (or, in the case of the American tourists, their off-key singing and gymnastic displays). Not all of them, it seemed to me, had discovered that there are in fact two theatres, one much smaller and apparently built for musical performances. I read on an information board that the many-coloured stones on the stage floor were imported from across the Mediterranean, hailing from Greece, Turkey, Egypt, and Tunisia. After taking a few pictures, I sat down and read a book waiting for the ten o’clock opening time at the nearby museum.

Built partly into the face of the hill, the museum has two giant portal-like windows that gaze over the amphitheatre and the nearby townscape. However, its exhibits are also highly interesting. There are several large and intricate mosaics, as well as beautiful tombs and drinking vessels. These displays are arranged in chronological order from the top floor to the bottom floor of the museum, starting with the patchy pre-Roman archaeological record of the local Celtic population and ending with Christianised Rome.

I was due to see two friends from Oxford after their bus arrived at 10:30, so I started making my way down the hill towards the bridge where we said we would meet. It was still quite early, though, which gave me enough time to stop by the Cathedral of John the Baptist on the Way. Once again, I happened upon a mass. A whole choir was just singing a particularly moving piece in minor key, and when the priest waved around the incense burner, the smoke changed colours as the light hit it through the cathedral’s stained glass. Many priests wearing white and golden robes were in attendance.

I met Deeksha and Aditya on Bonaparte Bridge, and since they hadn’t eaten yet, we sat down at a café in the old town for a little while. I was glad that neither of them had a clear idea of what they wanted to do; I still had a few things on my list that I needed to check off before being able to relax. It was around then that we noticed a rather strange phenomenon: two distinct crowds were gathering in the streets, one carrying Welsh flags and wearing red, the other clad in yellow and green. We quickly and rather unhappily realised that our trip happened to coincide with a rugby match between Wales and Australia. As the day wore on, the crowds kept getting thicker and thicker, to the point that from one lookout, we could distinctly recognise a red mass crowding the streets.

After eating breakfast, we crossed the bridge back to the peninsula and walked along the river through a very extensive farmers’ market. I never realised how many types of tomatoes there are, and I still cannot fathom what different uses they all might have. We also noted with interest that the prices are not as outrageous as one would expect at a similar event in Britain. From what I have seen so far in French Switzerland and France, farmers’ markets do seem to be a much greater part of daily life here than in the UK.

Once we had wound our way back north from Place Bellecour to Place des Jacobins, we decided it was time for lunch. Our extensive research conducted from a bench opposite the fountain, however, turned out to have been a complete waste of time when we found that every restaurant under our consideration was packed with tourists. Eventually, we were forced to simply sit down at the first restaurant with free seats. In retrospect, perhaps it was lucky that we did so, as the food was delicious. We shared three dishes: a burrata, a red pesto penne, and my personal favourite, penne with cheese and truffles.

Following lunch, we decided to visit the Cathedral and take the funicular up to the Basilica. However, the line for the funicular was so long that we decided to take the less popular funicular to the Amphitheatre instead. From thence we climbed a little further to the Basilica, taking in the views of the city now that the sun was no longer shining from the east. I thought the Basilica had a lot of character both from the outside and on the inside. The hard contours of its exterior decorations seem like and early foreshadowing of art-deco, while the colourful mosaics on the interior feel almost orthodox. We spent quite a while looking over the city from the square to the Basilica’s northern side.

It was around half past five when I decided it was time for me to leave. I would have to return to work the next day and I had left my laundry to dry over the weekend. The state I had left it in made me particularly worried, as the washing machine has given up on drying, and my wringing skills could use a lot more work (in fact, I wrung my clothes so long that I painfully wore down the skin on the inside of my thumbs). During the night before my departure, I had set I fell asleep to the sounds of water dripping into several painstakingly distributed lunchboxes and cups, as well as my bin. Fortunately, that sound had stopped by the time I had woken up, so I felt relatively secure opening the windows and hanging my bedding along the frames without taking any special precautions.

What did derail my plans a little was an accident somewhere on the route between Lyon and Geneva, which caused a significant delay. The holdup could have been much longer, though, and I have to commend the everyone involved in the creative re-routing of our train and the arrangement of bus transport for everyone heading to the intermediate stops.