Lyon - Food, Rivers, and Churches

We arrived in Lyon to find that our apartment was on the 4th floor.  No elevator.  Fortunately, the owner, Corrinne was kind enough to help us schlep our luggage up there.  It was 77 stairs in all, so we tried to limit the number of excursions / day.  The location of the place was excellent.  Really close to most attractions, restaurants, and, importantly, a short walk to some very good bakeries.
Our first sightseeing trip was an excursion to La Basilique Notre Dame de Fourvière .  On the way, we, of course, stopped for croissants and accidentally stumbled on The Lyon Cathedral, a.k.a. Cathédrale Saint-Jean-Baptiste de Lyon, which began constructions in 1180 and was finished in 1476 on the ruins of the original 6th century church.

 

 

Enjoying lunch between churches

Then up to the big Lyon attraction, La Basilique Notre Dame de Fourvière an over-the-top massive and ornate church that overlooks the entire city.

Toto, I think we're not in Kansas anymore!

The view from the top is pretty impressive.

Then, a short walk down the hill leads us to the Ancient Theatre of Fourvière which was built starting in 15BC and expanded in the 2nd century AD.

On Saturday, we took it easy, and walked north from our apartment about 10 minutes to Place des Terreaux, which has the Bartholdi Fountain, the The Lyon Museum of Fine Arts and some nice cafes.

Sunday we took the city bus tour.  We got off at the Musée des Confluences which has an interesting architecture and a number of exhibits including natural history, African culture etc.

Most of the rest of our week was spent schmeing around and checking out various restaurants.    

Sand sculpture street art on Rue de la République

Alexandra went to mass a couple of times at the St. Nizier Church, a massive structure about a 3 minute walk from our apartment.

On Wednesday (5/23) there was a massive labor march on the street 1/2 block from the apartment:

And on Thursday, our trip to Geneva was screwed up by yet another train strike.  Our train to Geneva (a 2 hr ride) turned into a 6 hour ordeal involving 2 buses on windy secondary roads.  At one point the first bus was only 12km away from Geneva, but he wouldn't let anyone off, as his next stop was a town 40 km south.  That was where we transferred to the bus that finally took us to Geneva... but that bus let us off pretty far from the central station and our hotel, so a friendly fellow passenger led us to the central station, where our train would've delivered us to 4 hours earlier.

I hope they were striking for something important!