Taking a train under the English Channel has long been a bucket list item for me. O feels otherwise. She is less than thrilled taking BART under the bay. So she flew to Lyon and I took the train.
The high speed train rolls through the English and French countryside at about 150 mph, dipping under the Channel for about 25 miles along the way. The trip through the tunnel is only about 10 minutes, less time than taking BART from SF to Oakland. I was in Paris in about four hours. It was interesting, but a bit anticlimactic.
The tunnel bore is about 300 feet below sea level, which means the Channel is far shallower than I would have thought.
France was green and the cows were white.
Once in Paris, I took the Metro from Gare du Nord to Gare de Lyon. Lines for Metro tickets were exceptionally long, and the directions to the various gates were obscure. I made my connection with two minutes to spare, sprinting the last bit (as much as you can sprint dragging a large piece of luggage) and arrived at my seat panting and sweating.
The TGV train from Paris got me to Lyon in about two hours. O of course was already there.
Lyon is an ancient city. Sitting at the confluence of the Rhône and Saône rivers, it was an important trading town well before the Romans conquered Gaul.
Our hotel was on a peninsula between the two rivers, perfect for walking to most of the sites in town.
The Basilica of Notre Dame de Fourviere dominates the hill overlooking the city. There is an impressive set of Roman ruins nearby.
The street art was pretty impressive, too.
The food in Britain was very good, frankly better than we expected, but the food in Lyon is on a whole other level.
A lot of that is down to Paul Bocuse, the celebrated chef who put Lyon on the map of top French culinary meccas.
In the center of Lyon there is a vast gourmet market dedicated to him. You can buy virtually any high-end food stuff here. It's an amazing display of deliciousness.
But over all, there is the cheese.
Hundreds of varieties from all over France. Cow, sheep, goat, hard, soft, mild, pungent, they have everything. We bellied up to the cheese bar and demanded the finest cheeses known to man, and after a detailed discussion with the resident cheese whiz, that's just what we got, paired with a delightfully crisp white wine. French cheese is unpasteurized, allowing a wider range of bacteria to colonize the cheese, producing a deeper, more complex set of flavors.
It would take months to taste them all, but what a delicious project.
Bistrot culture is alive and well in Lyon. Classic Lyonnaise cooking is pure comfort food. Except for the andouillettes, little kidney sausages that look delicious but reek of urine. A local favorite, an acquired taste I never want to acquire.
One of the most interesting sites in Lyon is the Resistance and Deportation History Center. It presents a detailed and depressing history of the French resistance in Lyon under German occupation and the roundup and deportation of the city's Jewish population, most of whom were murdered in Auschwitz and similar extermination camps. There's a 20-minute film about the capture and trial of Klaus Barbie, known as the Butcher of Lyon. Watching him smirking through the wrenching testimony of some of his victims is difficult. So is knowing that the ideology that produces and rewards people like him is making a comeback.
We took a stroll through the ruins of the old Roman town to clear our heads.
There a large amphitheater that is still used for concerts.
The museum has many well-preserved artifacts from the Roman era.
The Basilica of Notre Dame de Fourviere is built on the site of the forum of Trajan. It's a fairly recent addition to the city, started in 1872 and completed in 1896.
The magnificent doors are more Art Nouveau than Gothic.
The interior is very elaborate, with huge paintings in a much more recent style than most cathedrals.
And the grounds offer sweeping views of the city. The weather was so clear we could see the snow-capped peaks of the Alps in the far distance.
After three lovely days in Lyon, we took the TGV to Paris to meet our good friends, the Pereiras. We were there to celebrate Eileen's birthday, and we started the celebration with a class on pairing wine with cheese. The instructor introduced us to many excellent cheeses and wines to go with them.
The next day, we walked through a Paris filled with massive construction preparing for the Olympics in July.
Place de la Concorde was completely filled with viewing stands for various events.
On a mission for birthday fun!
The Maritime Fountain has been spiffed up for the games.
On the Champs-Élysées, Louis Vuitton is building a five-star hotel shaped like a Louis Vuitton trunk.
Our time in Paris with the Pereiras was golden, but all too brief.
Now it was time to catch a train to Bayeux and the Normandy landing sites.
P.
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