My new home for the next 3 months and 2 weeks: Lyon, France. As the final part of my degree I have to do a final year project at a French university, so here I am. At the end of the 3 months I graduate, and who knows where I’ll be after that! All I know is that it’s about time – I just realised that by the time I finish my degree (5 years) I’ll have spent 23% of my life at university!
My new kitchen (with a concoction being prepared, for some scale)
Anyway, in typical French, disorganized fashion, they don’t have enough rooms for all students so I’m sharing a room with another (2nd year) student (although luckily he seems friendly enough). On the other hand the kitchen is slightly on the small side (read: tiny).
I spent a good part of the day today wandering around the city; I’ve visited Lyon once before (briefly, last year), but wanted to get an idea of where I was living, how far away various places were, etc.
Lyon, although a large city with some industrial and/or run-down districts around it, is actually a nice place with a nice inner old town. The centre is based around the confluence of the Rhone and Saône rivers, with a hill nearby with a basilica perched on top.
One of the many boulevards of Lyon
The centre of the city (outside of the old town) is your typical French city – wide boulevards with tall buildings and ornate balconies. It’s quite a big place, but the public transport is relatively quick and efficient and reasonably price as well. Between the centre of town and the old town lie the two rivers, which merge into one further downstream (the Rhone is bluer than the Saône (which is a far browner color) so apparently it’s possible to see where they mix for quite a while downstream). From the bridges across the rivers you can get some nice views of both the riverfronts and of the old town. In fact, looking towards the old town you can see Lyon’s own Eiffel Tower! Well, it wasn’t designed by Monsieur Eiffel and it’s a lot smaller, but it’s a tower that resembles Paris’ famous Eiffel Tower (3rd picture below):
The view looking down the Rhone river
The view looking up the Saône River
Lyon's Eiffel Tower from a bridge over the Rhone
The old town is full of small roads and alleyways, with courtyards inside the buildings. There are also a number of passageways known as des traboules which were originally used to transport goods from street to street, but which were also used during the German occupation during World War II to prevent the Germans from gaining complete control of the area. I’ve been through a couple of these traboules on my previous visit to Lyon, but this time when I found one (I couldn’t find any others), despite the sign saying it was kept open (by agreement between the city and the owner), the door was locked.
One of the traboules
After a long and steep climb to the top of the hill next to the old town you reach the basilica, built in the 1870’s. Both the view of Lyon from the top of the hill and the interior of the basilica are well worth the climb (or, if you don’t feel like a workout, you can get the funicular to the top).
The view from the basilica
The interior of the basilica
Walking around the top of the hill presents a few more views of the city, as well as a few other things of vague interest – a couple of stumps of bricks which they claim to be remains of Roman aqueducts (I guess who am I to say they aren’t) as well as an old cemetary, the Cimetière de Loyasse, opened in 1807.
The Cimetière de Loyasse at the top of the hill
On my way back I noticed a park just next to where I live with a bunch of animals (like a zoo, but apparently not a zoo) – elephants, tigers, lions, mongooses (mongeese??), amongst others. I didn’t have time to stop unfortunately, but expect pictures of all sorts of animals shortly!
