Catching Up (Again)

I have neglected my blog since before Christmas, for which I apologize.  I could dredge up various excuses, but I’ll just use one:  Bloggers block.  Fortunately, Lorraine has done a better job of keeping up with our activities on her blog: Lorraineinlyon.blogspot.com.  

Since I have written, we have visited friends in Paris for a few days through Christmas Eve Dinner, had a wonderful Christmas dinner and overnight with friends in Villefranche-sur-Soane, had a visit here from our Paris friends, had Lyon friends here for lunch, taken a sightseeing trip to the Macon region of Burgundy, as well as our normal activities living in Lyon.  We are more than half-way through our year here now and we still love it.  We are beginning to despair about having to leave, even though we miss friends and family at home in the US.

I propose to use this post to just show you some pictures of our life and activities since before Christmas.  Next time I’ll show you pictures of our recent overnight trip to Montpellier.

Even though there was a transportation strike that cancelled lots of trains throughout France, we were able to take the TGV to Paris on Dec. 23 to visit Lorraine’s friend from high school Barbara Major and Paul Kaehler.  The strike had also stopped the metros and most buses in Paris, so we didn’t do a lot of travelling around the city.  Fortunately, we had a wonderful hotel in an excellent neighborhood near our friends’ apartment.  We had a great view of the Eiffel Tower outside our window.

Walking down hill toward the Tower, we also passed a memorial to Comte de Grasse, who helped Washington defeat the British at Yorktown.

We ate a fabulous Christmas Eve Dinner with Barbara, Paul, and their friends at Le Reminet in Paris.  My entrée, plat (paleron de veau) and dessert are shown.  The food, wine and conversation were all excellent.

On Christmas day we rode the TGV back to Lyon from Paris, then immediately jumped on a slower train to go back up the river to Villefranch-sur-Soane for Christmas dinner with new friends Mike and Joan Smith and Mark and Anne Gallops.  We started with Anne’s foie gras with spiced bread and ended with a traditional bouche de noel.  While I don’t have photographs, the company and everything in between was also wonderful. 

Mike and Joan’s house – right on the Soane river that also goes through Lyon – is fantastic, as you can see.

Shortly after Christmas, we had an errand to run in the Croix-Paquet area – one metro stop or a very steep walk downhill from our apartment - and we happened upon the restaurant La Mere Brazier, which Lorraine recognized as one of the very best in Lyon.  Mere Brazier was one of the five women who took over running top restaurants during the war, and she was the mentor for many top chefs, including most notably, Paul Bocuse, who died last year but is still revered here in Lyon.  We decided to go in for lunch. 

Fortunately, we were told we had to use the Menu d’Affaires (Lunch Menu) because it was after the closing time between lunch and dinner.  The reason that was fortunate is that the prices on the a la carte menu ranged from 80 euros/person up to 250 euros (for 2 to 4 people).  Our lunch menu was 2 courses for 62 euros or 3 courses for 75 euros.  The meal was worth every centime and more.  In addition to the two plats (courses) we ordered – main and dessert – they served at least 3 more.  Everything was absolutely delicious, and the service was impeccable.  I only have pictures of our two desserts, but they might give you an idea of what it was like.

One of our favorite spots in Lyon is the exit from the metro at Cordeliers station.  As the escalator gets to the top, you look left and see the beautiful Bourse (or stock exchange), and you look right and see the reflection of that building in the glass façade of the Monoprix.  We never get tired of it.

Here is a picture of our highly-energy-efficient French clothes dryer.  Using it makes me feel pretty self righteous.

We took a trip to the Lyon Museum of Modern Art.  Here are a couple of the outdoor exhibits and a picture of the Park de Tete d’Or, across the street from the gallery.

On New Year’s Eve, we ran into our two next-door neighbors, Sylvie and Muriel who said that the party they had planned to attend was cancelled because the host had the flu.  We invited them to our apartment for some Champagne.  They came with oysters and foie gras, so we had a really good party ourselves.  We went through the champagne pretty quickly, but had sufficient wine reserves to keep the party going.

When Barbara and Paul (from Paris) came to visit us in Lyon we went to an immersive Picasso exhibit.  Large rooms were set up with angled walls and planes and lots of projectors displayed his art on floors, ceilings, and the angled walls.  The patrons walked through it all, sometimes making shadows on the projected art.  It was fascinating.

We walked from the Picasso Exhibit down to the Confluence Museum at the confluence of the Rhone and Saone rivers, passing the green world headquarters of Euronews.  The Confluence Museum looks like it could be a massive space ship that happened to land where the two rivers come together.

Backing up a good many centuries, here are some pictures from the Cathedral St. Jean, where Henri IV married Marie de Medici in 1600.  This Cathedral is one of my favorite places in Lyon.

Lyon is lighted beautifully at night.  Here is Barbara photographing the Woodrow Wilson bridge and the Grand Hotel Dieu across the Rhone.

The murals in Lyon are a special treat.  I have shown you the big picture of the Mur de Canuts in a previous blog post.  Here are Lorraine and Barbara following a young woman into a bank in the mural, and Paul getting fresh with a much younger woman on the steps.

It looks like one of the mural painters let the plaster harden a little too much while he was working!

Here is one of the famous Traboules on the way up the hill to the Croix-Rousse.  This is the well-known Cour des Voraces, unique because of the monolithic concrete structure supporting the stairs.

On an extremely cold and windy January day (I had to tie my hat on with my scarf.), we went to a bridge on the Rhone to watch 300 crazy people swim 8 km down the river.  This is an annual event so we had to see it.  Some of the swimmers had floatation devices, but others just swam with flippers.  It was impressive.

I really like this view of the Croix-Rousse plateau from the Soane river.

Near the end of January, we took the train to Macon to meet new friend Chantal, who took us through some Maconnais villages and particularly to the Rock of Solutre, which stands guard over the vineyards of Pouilly-Fuisse.

Finally, at least twice a week one of us exclaims about the sky at sunset from our 5^th floor windows.  I’ll leave you with a couple of pictures of the view.