Lyon

We had done a little bit of research for our stay in Lyon, but we are still really surprised and impressed by this city. It isn't full of museums, but it has beautiful buildings and bridges, plus it has an incredibly well-preserved Mediaeval town centre.

In Mediaeval times, Lyon made a lot of its money from the production of fine fabrics. To get the massive bolts of fabric through the city without soiling them, the merchants used a passageway system that connected streets through courtyards and tunnels. These passageways (called traboules) are still in existance and some of them are open to the public. Finding the traboules is a bit like a treasure hunt. The doors that lead to the traboules also lead to the apartments that line them (it is all a residential area). The button to push to gain entry is on a different place on every door, so we may have inadvertently been buzzing residents all day. Once through the door on the street, a passageway would lead to a courtyard or another passageway. There are also passageways underground, but these are not open to the public. The traboules were also utilized by the resistance to avoid capture by the Nazis in WWII.

There are amazing restaurants here and they serve everything from caviar to pig's feet (we have had neither). It is an evening activity in which everyone seems to participate: wander from restaurant to restaurant, reading the menus, then make a selection. Too bad we can't have a different dish in each place, but we would explode!