La vita è troppo breve per Dottore Gianni: Bloggo Sud de la France-o Fall 2019 4: Days 3 & 4 in Lyon

My third day in Lyon began with a walk back to the old town, only a short distance from the square where I ate and watched puppet theatre the day before, I was whisked up Fourviére Hill in a funicular and as I stepped out of the station, voila! The facade of the Basilica of Notre Dame de Fourviére.

Attractive and symmetrical if not overwhelming. Not so its interior!

The Basilica was built on the site of the ancient Roman Forum of Trajan, between 1872 and 1884. The stunning interior is a mixture of the Byzantine and the Romanesque. I was really impressed by the mosaic work.

On one side of the nave, the Battle of Lepanto, 1571, in which Christians defeated a much larger army of Turks and turned the tide of the Turkish invasion of Europe.

For theatre buffs, some scholars suggest that Shakespeare set Act II Scene i of Othello in this battle. With the help of Othello's ship (and a mighty storm) the battle is won...the Bard never feared tweaking history to forward his plots.

On the other side, Joan of Arc at Orleans, after defeating the British.

The dome is impressive as well.

From the sublime to the slightly ridiculous, some locals, I've read, have given the basilica an alternate title: "the upside-down elephant." Why? Seen at a certain angle they say, the building resembles an elephant's body, and its four towers look to be the elephant's legs. Okay...if they say so...I saw it from several angles and am not at all certain that I buy it.

After a good look around the inside, I had at a look at Lyon from the terrace of the basilica.

The cathedral is just below, through the leaves, then the Saône, and if look to its right and follow the road on which the bridge is you might catch a wee bit of the bridge over the Rhône - squint and you might even see a bit of the river itself.

A look out over the countryside, also from the terrace.

Next I walked a few steps and got a close-up of the Eiffel Tower junior,

I then strolled the very short distance along the hill to the substantial remains of two ancient Roman theatres. In the photo below I'm at the edge of the theatre district looking back at the basilica, and also at the museum of Lugdunum, the name the Romans gave Lyon. Alas I didn't have enough time to visit, but...another time perhaps? The first of the two, below, is the larger,

the second is called the odeon, for musical entertainments, slightly more intimate, and with inlaid and well-preserved marble sections from all around the Mediterranean, said to be unique to Gaul.

The boards at each are for musicians and the like, as concerts are given throughout the summer.

I couldn't visit the Lugdunum museum because I had booked a midday tour of the old town, so I took the funicular back down the hill and arrived just other members of the tour group were gathering in the pleasant square adjacent to the funicular station.

Our tour guide Jean was charming and knowledgable about the old town.

Her focus was on hidden courtyards and "traboules," both of which are accessible to the public, as long as the public remains polite and fairly quiet. Traboules are the more interesting of the two. Jean is standing in front of one in the photo opposite. When one walks along old town streets, there are of course many doors. Some of those doors open not on a shop or eatery, but

are passages through to the street parallel to the the street on which one is walking. So! A great shortcut for those in the know.

But not simply a shortcut! Inside the traboules are shops, bars and posh housing, going at the rate of, per Jean, 5000 Euros per square meter. Traboules are also interesting historically. Before World War II gangsters frequently hid in them to dodge the police, and during that war resistance fighters used them to surprise, fight and flee from occupying Nazi soldiers. The interior of this traboule allows a peek in at one of the expensive flats.

In another, foliage on the balconies is the rule.

Some traboules are not at all secret. The cafe in the photo below advertises itself as part of a traboule. Walk in and "escape" as you like, with an aperitif, or down the traboule to the next parallel street!

Several squares throughout the old town are worth a visit. Some are rather simple, some, like the one in the photo below quite elegant.

In some of the squares and elsewhere about the old town there are doorways, very like those of traboules, that open on private courtyards. The owners welcome the public to pop in for a quick view or two. The photo above shows one such, the view upon entering, the one below the view having turned around and beginning to leave it. The tower surprised me and many of the others.

The tour having ended, I realized that I was famished. As it broke up in the middle of the old town I had plenty of choices for a meal. In fact every day I was in Lyon I ate my main meal of the day at an old town cafe.

Today I chose an outdoor table at le Sol, a "cafe-comptoir" - a comptoir is literally a counter, or a bar. The photo above was taken from my table.

I chose a dish one really must taste, while in Lyon - a salade Lyonnaise. It was very good! The wine was not bad either.

In fact, as you can see from the smile on my face, I was one very happy homme! A very good way to end my day.

The next day was my last full day in Lyon. I booked a tram tour that would focus on an area I had not yet visited, the Croix Rousse, but to get to the meeting point for the tour I had first to visit the 1st Arrondissement, the modern city center of Lyon. To do so I had to cross the Rhone, the first time I'd seen the river in my four-day visit.

Almost all of the center seemed a major construction site, and a major headache for getting around in it.

The center of the center, you might say is the Hôtel de Ville (above), with its imposing facade. I cut this photo off at the bottom, because the long, rectangular square that fronts it was almost completely torn up.

In fact the only recognizable entity in the square other than the Hôtel de Ville was a fountain designed by Bartholdi about halfway down the square. If you read my post on the day trip to Colmar earlier in this visit, you'll remember that I toured the museum in that city named for the Bartholdi best-known for his design of the Statue of Liberty.

Other than the Lady in the Harbor, NYC, this is the only full-sized statue of his I've seen. The female commanding four horses depicts France itself, and each of the horses represents the four great rivers of the country, as you see carefully guided by her.

I was more curious to see the relatively curious looking opera house, very close to the Hôtel de Ville - a mix of the old and the new.

The area below the arc of the roof dates back to the 1830s. The barn-like upper section, created by Jean Nouvel, was finished in 1993.

I find it an odd juxtaposition, but it is a complicated complex, if you will. There are restaurants, several different performance spaces, and at the very top of the arc is a dance studio. Much of the "walls" of the building are made of glass said to represent transparency - no secrets here, we're open to all.

I arrived at this area very early for the tour, had coffee and croissant just off the square, then decided to take a funicular, a steep ride up and the end of on one line of the Metro. I decided to have a quick stroll around the Croix Rousse area before descending again to join the tour.

It's the top of the city, airy and refreshing. Just outside the exit from the funicular is a huge market, a large section of it a farm market, the rest of it a flea market.

Get a load of those olives! I love olives and I wanted to literally get a load of them, but where would I put them, on this trip?

So, back down the funicular and on to the tour, on a tram, which was bumpy and glassed in for the most part, thus horrible for photo ops. It took us back up the hill very slowly, up curving roads and jostling all those riding in it.

Still, I managed to get a few shots while we moved. for example, above and below, another ancient Roman ruin - a huge amphitheatre.

The tour focuses on the murals of Croix Rouge...while I saw one in the old town the other day,

and while the first one we saw on the tour was on a similar level

Let's just say that there are murals and...MURALS. We were finally let out of the tram to look at this "neighborhood" - it will take the next three photos to show it to you, from left to right:

Meet the "Mur de Canuts" (Mural of the silk workers)- the largest mural in Europe. All that you see, except for bits of blue sky at the top and the back of a man's head at the bottom right of the center pic (messing the photo up, but giving you a sense of scale), is PAINT. Below is a small section of the whole, where you can probably see more clearly that that it's all trompe l'oeil, a brilliant visual trick.

I had to divide it into three photos because there was no way I could snap a pic of the whole.

That was our only time allotted out of the tram, but we did pass another, not nearly on the scale of Mur de Canuts, but impressive nevertheless: La Fresque de Lyonnaise, famous people of Lyon from different eras, all looking out at you from their balconies

The first below is a large portion of one wall, the second of the much thinner adjacent wall. The wall you can barely see to the right of the second pic, is simply a wall, no paint, I promise.

We were nearly back downtown when we spotted still another, on a smaller scale,

but fitting for the building it was painted on - a library!

There are many more murals throughout Lyon, and you can get a map of them at the tourist center. While I might suggest that you skip the tour because of the unpleasant mode of transport, unless you are stout of heart, the area is very hilly, so you might want to bear the transportation so that you can see some amazing art.

When the tour ended, I headed straight for the old town, for I was very hungry. I found the Cafe ABC, and had one of the best meals of my visit to Lyon, served by a very friendly and knowledgeable waiter. Below is the view from my table.