After our long walk to the hotel we arrive at the accomodation in the afternoon. It takes a bit to check in but at least we get free mineral water to take to our room. That is an amenity we will use often during our stay given the heat wave that hits Lyon exactly during our stay. The room itself is quite typical looking even though it is expensive but we are here because of the location right next to the Old Lyon quarter.
So out we go to explore the city, we have some time before our relative arrives later in the day. Even out of the door the views of the city is quite beautiful and there are some nice side streets that we decide to explore as we try to make our way to the central area of the Old City.
We soon reach the Rue Saint Jean which runs through the middle of the Old Town Lyon. The first major attraction is the Place of Change. Not of our change but it was a market place in the olden days were goods were changing hands. Here is one of the more famous old houses, the Maison Thomassin dating from the 1200s with a Gothic facade.
We continue through the old town exploring side streets and interesting old buildings. It is surprising how many of them are empty of people, we expected a lot more people here in the middle of the tourist season.
We are exploring the old town actually mostly to find a place to eat and the Petit Glouton sounds like the perfect place to stop. We order from the menu which includes appetizers, main course, and crepes from the crepe station as dessert.
We especially like that the menu is full of specialties we wanted to try like the Lyonnaise Salad, a salad with a poached egg in the middle of it and bacon and croutons. It is quite good and the same goes for the Terrine Bressane that is the second appetizer for us.
For main course we eat Quenelle de brochet, another Lyonnaise specialty, consisting of a dumpling filled with pike (brochet) served with a creamy Nantua sauce. This is quite good while the second specialty, a Saucisson de Lyon is a bit more middling but still good. And then the crepes are reasonably good but not as special as we would have expected from the homeland of crepes.
Right next to it is another major attraction, even one of the reasons that Old Lyon is an Unesco World Heritage Site. It is a traboule, a covered passageway or secret shortcut that connects two streets through private courtyards and buildings. They were originally built in the 4th century to help residents get to the Saône River quickly. And while some are now private the Longue Traboule is still public, if you can only find it. We do and in we go to explore the traboule.
This traboule is still abutting actual houses so we try to be quiet to not annoy the inhabitants. That is because it is quite quiet inside after the hubbub of the main street. We like it that is is much cooler here, quite welcome on this hot day.
We pass through the whole length of the traboule, it is quite long and a couple times we assume that a door will be closed but there is always a way forward. And we exit on a completely different street where it takes a bit to get our bearings before continuing to explore.
There are some interesting statues along the way and we keep our eyes peeled for anything interesting. Like the lamb representing the Rue du Boeuf (Beef Street)….
And then we arrive at our planned turn around point, the cathedral Saint-Jean-Baptiste after which the main street is named. Today we do not enter, we are going to do that tomorrow with our relative. But we admire the cathedral facade which is beautifully illuminated by the late afternoon sun.
We return on a parallel street enjoying some beautiful views of the old town which in our opinion is not visited enough compared to other cities. Like Nice, there you could barely walk, here you can find entire side streets that are empty.
After a brief rest at the hotel it is time to go out again, this time at the airport to pick our relative. We choose a slightly different way to get there, first via metro and then again via the tram. This will minimize walking and also allow us the see the beautiful City Hall of Lyon and the Place des Terreaux that in anchors.
The Place des Terreaux is in fact another reason Lyon is a World Heritage Site and we can understand why given the beautiful buildings surrounding it including the Fine Arts Museum. But we are looking for the metro and then after finding it is time to take the tram back to the airport. Here we have a discussion with the ticket inspector, she doesn’t want to recognize our reduced price tickets which are valid for the day you have taken a TGV train ride. We go back and forth but in the end she gives up, she was somehow trying to explain that we did the train ride earlier in the day but nowhere does it say about a time limit or the direction you need to take. It just says it is reduced the same day from airport to the train station.
At the airport we wait for some time for our relative but at least the plane arrives on time and then it is time to return via our prebooked free taxi we have gotten through Booking.com. Somehow even though the taxi driver is supposed to wait at the airport exit he is not there and we have to exchange multiple messages until he arrives and we can return to the hotel to rest after a full day.
