Le Parc de la Tete d'Or

Lyon has many parks throughout the city.  Most are small with maybe a few benches and trees for shade.  One, however, is more like Central Park in New York City.  It is the Parc de la Tete d’Or, or “Park of the Golden Head” – the translation is mine, therefore highly suspect.  We decided that the next adventure in our new city would be a trip to this large park with sandwiches for a picnic on Sunday afternoon.


Le Parc de la Tete d’Or has a large lake with lots of boats (paddle-, electric- and row-), many shaded trails, some wide paved avenues for walkers, runners, and bicycles, but no cars.  It also has a botanical garden and an impressive zoo.  


As the crow flies, the park isn’t too far from us, but we are way up on a hill and it is down close to the level of the rivers.  We figured that since it is downhill all the way to the park, it would be an easy walk.  It was definitely downhill, but after the first half-million steps it got less easy.  

It is hard to see, but the left part of the walkway is steps, small steps but lots of them, the right side is a slightly scouped area.  To the right at intervals in the wall are door to what I assume are pretty nice apartments.  We thought that this won't be too bad.  I have to tell you that this is steeper than it looks.  We went to the end of this first picture and continued around a few more corners.  It looked like this descent would never end. Here is the view as we continued down.  To take this next picture I had to step to the right on the drainage area.  I was very uncomfortable to get off the steps on the slope.  My point is that this is really steep.

We finally reached the last set of steps where we could actually see the bottom and the river below us.  These steps were more conventional, with banisters.  By this time our thighs were quite rubbery.  The feeling was that you might not be able to control the placement of your feet.  

There were a few people going up instead of down.  Some were carrying babies or toddlers and their scooters.  I felt for them.

We made it all the way down the hill on wobbly legs and crossed the Rhone to the entrance of the park.  The gates are quite impressive, as you can see.

  We quickly found a shaded bench by the lake and ate our delicious sandwiches. 

After lunch and a rest for our complaining upper thighs we walked toward the zoo.  Our first encounter was with a mother and her frolicsome youngster giraffe.  The “baby” was probably only about 20 feet tall. 

A stylish zebra was prancing back and forth and posing for the cameras.

Next we came upon a flock (herd, gaggle, group) of Flamingos.  These were not as pink as the ones we see at zoos in the states, but they are beautiful and amazing. 

If I could fold my neck around like that, I could probably sleep on an airplane.



We rounded a corner in the trail to see across the water two magnificent Water Buffalo, a male and a female.  Their horns are very impressive! 

There were a couple of antelope near the Water Buffalo.  The male antelope - with some impressive horns of his own, on a smaller scale, got up and ambled over to the female Buffalo.  He was clearly interested in her, and she was not interested in him.  She used her horns to push him away, but he fought back with gusto.  Meanwhile, the male Buffalo ignored it all.  

The Buffalo pair finally walked off into the bush, but the antelope, with obvious delusions of grandeur, was not deterred.  I was impressed!

I forgot to check out the female antelope, but I’m certain that she was mortified.


There were also Crocodiles, Marsupials, and Monkeys, but they were mostly in dark habitats and hard to photograph.  It was a very nice zoo!


As we left, we walked past some beautiful flower displays and impressive greenhouses. 

We left the park, as it turns out, by a different gate than the one we entered.  We therefore decided to ride a bus to get home.  The bus took us to Cuire, a neighborhood a couple of metro stops north of Croix Rousse.  We walked down the Grande rue du Croix Rousse to our street - no more than 3/4 of a mile.  On the way we past the actual Croix Rousse.

We had looked for this cross last week but had not found it.  Apparently it was somewhat rose colored in times past.

We also passed the entrance to the Croix Rousse Hospital, which is close to where we live - thank goodness.

We reached home as tired but happy puppies.  

We leave early tomorrow to go to Clermont Ferrand to visit my cousin's Mother in law.  We met her when she visited the US last year and we became fast friends.  Next blog will tell you about that trip to the Auvergne.

PS.  I apologize for the change in font size.  I can't explain it, but when it changed, my choices were "too large" or "too small".  I don't know why.  Maybe I'll figure it out, or maybe not!

More explorations of Lyon

In this post, I'll show you some of the Old City (Vieux Lyon).  This area is across the Saone River from Croix-Rousse, where we live, but it actually isn't very far from us.  We've been there twice and we walked the whole way on our first trip.  Since getting there meant walking down Croix-Rousse hill, we chose to ride the metro back uphill.

On the way down, we pass the impressive Hotel de Ville in the 1st Arrondissment of the city.



Place Terraux, in front of the Hotel de Ville, is under renovation, so I'll come back and photograph when that is finished.

We crossed the Saone River to get to Vieux Lyon.

We had a wonderful dejeuneur (lunch) at La Grange de Saint-Jean.  It is a Bouchon Lyonnais, which means they serve typical Lyonnais food.  We were serenaded during lunch by two superb guitarists.

We then walked through one of the main streets of Vieux Lyon, which is the part of the city that attracts the most tourists.  There are vendors and restaurants of all types and from all nations lining the narrow streets.

At the end of the street we reached Place St. Jean with its beautiful cathedral, one of the three main churches in Vieux Lyon.

From the Vieux Lyon metro stop you can take one of two Funiculars to the top of Fourviere hill.  The one we took goes to the Roman era amphitheaters and on to the village of St. Just.  We rode to the top and walked down to the Roman ruins, which date back to around 15 BC.  They were built in the center of the Roman city Lugdunum, which became Lyon.  They were found in the 1500s and are in amazingly good shape, as you can see.

There are a large and a smaller theaters in the complex and apparently they could hold as many as 10,000 people.  It is awesome to walk among the old stones and consider what transpired there centuries ago.  We will go back and take in the adjacent museum.

From the Roman amphitheaters, we walked to the Fourviere Basilica.  I erroneously thought that the walk would be downhill.  I was sadly mistaken!  The Basilica was much higher on the hill than the Roman ruins.  On the way, we could see glimpses of the white Basilica and the 15 meter gold-plated bronze statue of Mary on top of the smaller chapel, which kept us climbing.  We weren't disappointed.

The interior of the Basilica is the most ornate church interior I have ever seen, period.  Of course it is hard to photograph, but I'll show you a few pictures.

Since Fourviere Basilica is on the highest point in the city, the views from there are fantastic.

The half-cylinder above is the Opera House.  To the left of it is the Hotel de Ville I showed you earlier.  

The open area above is Place Bellecour, the largest open Place in Europe.  (I'm not sure of the definition of "Place", but it is very large.)

This ls the Cathedral St.-Jean from the Basilica Fourviere.

I'll stop here.  Please don't forget to check out Lorraine's blog:  Lorraineinlyon.blogspot.com.  She is talking a lot about food in Lyon and how you get it.  It is worth your attention.
A bientot.

Hi friends,
This post will contain more pictures and fewer words than the last one.  I keep thinking of clever subtexts that I can use to make individual posts interesting, but I'm a mathematician, not a writer, so I'll just post some of the dozens of pictures I've taken and maybe tell you a little bit about some of them.

I will just say that the more we explore our neighborhood (Croix-Rousse) and our city (Lyon), the more we love it.

The two pictures above show a Poulet roti vendor in the small market just around the corner from our apartment, which I have shown first because I just finished eating one of his fabulous chickens.  They are roasted on spits and the juices drip down and cook wonderful small potatoes.  

The second picture is of the Place Croix Rousse, just a few steps from the market I just described.  The market is there every day but Monday, apparently all year long.  I'll show you a picture of some of the vegetables and fruits at the market.  Note that this is the "small" market.  A few steps from my second picture across Boulevard Croix Rousse is the "large" market.  It runs for about one kilometer down the boulevard and also is active every day but Monday.  The produce at both markets is absolutely fabulous.  

We are trying to explore our neighborhood/city little by little - Lorraine keeps reminding me that we are going to be here for a year so we don't have to do everything in the first few weeks - but I am anxious to see it all NOW.  

We decided to walk down the hill and across the Saone River to the Vieux Lyon (the old town).  It is only a little less than a mile away, but there is a lot of elevation change.  The Croix Rousse is on a very significant hill between the Saone and the Rhone rivers. The walk down wasn't hard and was interesting.  I'll show you some of the way.  We took the Montee de la Grande Cote down the hill to almost the level of the river.  It is a very steep set of small steps going straight down the fall line (steepest part) of the hill toward the river.  I am not yet an expert but I think it was built so that the Canuts (silk weavers) could roll there barrels of silk down the hill to the port on the Saone River. If I find that that is fake news I'll correct it later.

Later I'll show you pictures from Vieux Lyon.  

Until next time, A bientot.