Chapitre III: Lyon
9:00: My roommate now understands how I felt the night before. I still don’t know how we managed that hill to the auberge de jeunesse with all our bags. The 200m climb must have taken us a good half an hour... Food poisoning is not pretty. The view from the hostel, however, was.
10:00: Granting ourselves this one morning to be lazy tourists, we jump on a double-decker bus. A crackling French recording explains us the sights while we click away madly on our cameras. Check out these wall paintings!
12:00: Already falling in love with this place – it ticks so many boxes on my “Perfect City” list. Permission to add to “Must Come Back One Day” and “Potential Residency” lists? Granted.
14:00: I walk my poor roommate, now an unsettling shade of wasabi green, to the emergency room to see a doctor. She, in turn, pushes me out to explore Lyon by myself with a: “On est en France – il faut que tu en profites!”
19:00: After a good five hours of walking around the city and across countless bridges over the blue, blue rivers, I sit down in a barber’s chair. Pierre gives me my first haircut in a year and we talk about his two daughters and my insane travel plans. He tells me I speak beautiful French and I let myself believe it. I am happy to leave a piece of me behind in this lovely city. Plus, I now have a French haircut!
April 27
9:00: My roommate is better, thank goodness! So, we're off to the Musée des Miniatures et Décors de Cinéma. It is one of my favourite museums in France – high praise in a group which includes the Musée d’Orsay, Louvre and the Orangerie. We see the set of the film Parfum and room after room of movie props: a mask worn by Arnie in The Terminator, Gibbs’ badge from NCIS, Indiana Jones’ hat and whip, Neo’s gun from the Matrix... There are also some unbelievable miniature artworks and sets. These artists would make excellent surgeons! (Left: 2x3cm paper cuttings. Right: a miniature set of about 20cm wide.)
12:00: Time for a taste of the gastronomic capital of France. Midday menu: salad with gizzard conserve, calf’s head with steamed potatoes and dessert of the day, pear in red wine. So. Good.
14:00: Basilique Notre Dame de Fourvière. Jaw dropping. Every inch of the walls are covered with intricate mosaics. I feel so small and humble. The tears flow with no effort at all.
17:00: A traditional puppet show at the Théâtre du Guignol:“Guignol et le Croquemitou”, the mystery of the catnapper. It's a little sad that I don’t get some of the jokes the five-year-olds sitting beside me are giggling hysterically at, but all the same, I love it. One more box ticked!
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