New L'Attitudes: Gastronomy - and more

Thursday, July 19, 2012

Gastronomy - and more - in Lyon

Here in Algeria, Friday and Saturday are weekend days. And this year the Algerian National Day, July 5, fell on a Thursday. Since July 4^th was a Wednesday, we enjoyed a rare 4-day weekend: Wednesday through Saturday off. We hopped on a plane and headed to Lyon, France. (One word of warning: the taxi ride from the airport to town cost 70€!)

Lyon, as seen on our first night

Baboo set us up in a gorgeous 5-star hotel overlooking the city. The location was great, right in the center of the historic district. It was high on a hill so each night we schlepped up 123 steps (the short cut) to the bottom of the hill on which our hotel sat. The hotel was fantastic with a beautiful pool area and terrace restaurant. http://www.villaflorentine.com/index.php?l=en Though we didn’t take advantage of the pool (too much sightseeing to do), we did enjoy the terrace once for breakfast and once for a fantastic gourmet dinner. If you don’t know, Lyon is considered the gastronomic capital of France, which many believe is the gastronomic capital of the world. So we were in a foodie’s paradise.

Here we are with Pierre Orsi

When we first arrived, we tried to make dinner reservations at our hotel’s restaurant, Les Terraces. Somehow there was a little mix up with the reservation and to make up for it, our hotel manager got us a reservation at the restaurant of Pierre Orsi, a colleague of Paul Bocuse. He drove us there in the hotel’s jaguar and he introduced us to the staff and to Pierre Orsi. We had an incredible meal. And we still had dinner at Les Terraces to look forward to later in the weekend. http://www.pierreorsi.com/

We took advantage of Lyon's “City Card,” which gave us several walking tours, a self-guided audio tour of the old town, full access to the transportation systems, entry into several museums, and even a boat ride along both the Saône and Rhône rivers. It was a great deal for us because we did all those things and more during our short time in Lyon. (We are competitive tourists.) Of course, we started with our usual trip around town in the hop-on-hop-off tour bus that gave us a good overview and orientation.

And when we got tired, we picked up some fresh bread, sausage, cheese, and wine and relaxed in our room to gear up for our evenings.

Snacks in our room

Cathédral St-Jean

We attended a concert in the cathedral of St. John. For two people who are not religious, it might be surprising how much time we spend in churches when we travel. But that’s where most of the history, the art, some of the most interesting architecture, and often the most beautiful music are. You just cannot beat the acoustics of a gothic cathedral. (I have a small sample of the concert; but by mistake, I shot it at a 90° angle and am unable to rotate it. And, of course, loading a video into these blogs is impossible anyway.)

Besides the wonderful gourmet restaurants, we also enjoyed several of the local “bouchons,” which are basically little bistros that serve Lyonnais fare. For example, Baboo had a very nice sirloin fondue while I had a veggie crêpe.

L'Atelier de Soierie

Lyon is also the center of France’s silk industry. Try as we might, we didn’t find a single silk tie that Baboo liked. We did take a guided tour in French of one of the earliest silk studios. It was very interesting even if I only understood 10%. (It was fascinating watching the antique weaving machines.) Baboo, of course, understood most of it.

It’s so hard to decide what to include here because we really did so much. The architecture, the art, the shops, the food … everything was wonderful. I will post a selection of photos on my Facebook page but fair warning: we took hundreds. So many other things of interest such as these buildings, whose sides – and sometimes entire facades – are painted in life-like murals.