We spent a day in Lyon on our way back to Zurich from southern France. Our guidebook (The Rough Guide to Europe ) promised good things, so we decided to check it out.
We started the day by taking a funicular up a hill to see some Roman ruins and an archeological museum (which, truth be told, we burned through pretty quickly). We headed back downtown and popped into the Cathédrale St-Jean, where we learned how to tell the difference between good angels and bad angels.
Having met the tourist requirement for cultural and historical activities, we then set out to do some serious meandering, enjoying not having any particular goals for the rest of the day. Turns out Lyon is a nice city. It felt much bigger than Zurich (and probably is, I’m just too lazy to look it up), and it was full of people out and about.
Although Lyon is know for its cuisine, the trusty guidebook let me know that I shouldn’t get my vegetarian hopes up since “the specialties focus on meat and offal.” I’m not even sure what offal is, but it doesn’t sound particularly appetizing. We opted to just grab some savory crepes for lunch and continued exploring.
As we walked around town, we started noticing more and more people dressed like weirdoes. We figured something must be up. Carnival? Nope, wrong time of year. Some crazy French holiday? It turned out to be some extremely large dance festival-type-thing, and all the costumed folks were meeting up with their respective gaggles for the start of a giant parade. We entertained ourselves watching that for the rest of the day, and then caught the train home.
You know you’ve spent too much time in Europe when Roman ruins, ornate cathedrals, and quaint cobblestone walking streets fail to dazzle you. Lyon was nice and all, but I’m starting to feel somewhat jaded.
Jaded is good!
I lived in ireland as a college student. When I first got over there, every time I saw a castle I would get excitred and say “Look, there’s a castle.” Then i would take a gazillion pictures and write to my familya nd friends at home about it. By the end of the school year I was saying, “Huh. Another castle. Big whoop…”
Global librarian, that’s exactly how I felt about cathedrals in Italy. “Another Bernini sculpture? Ho hum.”