Moving on to Lyon……

Packed it in for Bordeaux and headed out for the eastern side of France, Lyon. Shame to leave all that wine behind!

What we know of Lyon is that there is plenty of good food and a little wine there. Home to Chef Paul Bocuse known for nouvelle cuisine, which is where you take small portions of food, arrange it like an art display, and charge many, many Euro’s! Kinda like Benihana. Food shouldn’t be a problem and I’m sure we can find wine.

One of two rivers in Lyon. This one is the Saone River

Morning market by our flat

Lyon is also known for being a “mural” city with 5-6 buildings painted to represent scenes from daily life or to honor well known citizens for their achievements. There are also numerous walls, alleys, shops, etc. that have art graffiti or actual commissioned paintings

Local artist fun

This building depicts many of famous Lyonnais people

The Library building

One other, darker item that Lyon is known for is that during WW2, it was the location of SS Gestapo headquarters with Hauptsturmfuhrer (Captain) Klaus Barbie, the Butcher of Lyon, in charge. Klaus Barbie was held personally  responsible for the torture and deaths of 14,000 French people. Today, the building used for these tortures and executions is the Resistance Fighter Museum.

Hotel De Ville today

Hotel De Ville 1944

Our quaint flat is located in a 17th century building, on the 3rd floor, with a small courtyard outside the large windows. There’s a playground just around the corner that has 1 slide, that’s it, 1 slide, yet kids love it. From 5 to about 7;30pm in the evening, we can hear the children having the time of their life playing. Remember when it was simple??? When you didn’t need a lot to be happy??? Yeah, me neither.

First and last studio flat

The neighborhood

Building lobby

Lookin’ out my backdoor

The area we’re in is called “the working hill” and not for the reasons you’re thinking. This was a major silk manufacturing area in the early 1800’s. About 40% of the population was in the business of making silk. This was obviously all done by hand and took quite some time to create finished pieces, sometimes as long as a decade or more.

Grocery store is just down the street, tons of restaurants and a laundry is close by so we should have everything we need.  Yes the grocery store sells wine!