Rain to shine

Eli had his first big day with Vic and Candie. It began with a five-fifty wakeup--much too early for our tastes. Eli and I got dressed and went out for bread. When we returned, there was a lot more activity. Ally left for the archive. I accompanied the others in to show them around Lyon a bit. We waited nearly an hour for a bus that is supposed to come every twenty minutes. Did I mention it was raining? Well, it was, but that cleared up. After it came, we rode downtown and ended up walking around the middle of the Presqu'île.


Brief discursus on the geography of Lyon. Lyon is located at the confluence of the Rhône and Saône rivers. Both flow from the north, with the Rhône east of the Saône. Lyon was basically settled from west to east. The Gaulish and then Roman settlement was on the heights of Fourvière, near the bend in the Saône. This area is called Vieux (Old) Lyon. It's where the cathedral is. After the Middle Ages, the center of activity moved to the Presqu'île (Peninsula). Nowadays that's the nicest part of town. The north end of the Presqu'île is La Croix-Rousse, historically the center of the city's silk industry. It's pretty hilly. The area east of the Rhône is newer and includes the Parc de la Tête d'Or, Lyon's sole skyscraper, and the Part Dieu train station we keep ending up at. (The Presqu'île has its own train station, Perrache.) Our apartment is in the area known charitably as Lyon Plage, although there's certainly no beach here.

After I left them, Vic and Candie took Eli around Fourvière for a view of the city, before coming back down to the Presqu'île for more fun. It was supposed to rain, but in fact the weather was very pleasant except for a brief afternoon downpour. So they got to go more places than they had expected without resorting to malls or museums. They even crossed the Rhône, so Eli went all over. He especially enjoyed playing in the Roman ruins. I am told the he decried much of the reconstruction as "highly speculative" and "insufficiently attested by written records and similar sites." Fourvière, in particular, afforded an excellent view of the city, so Eli and his caretakers can now be trusted never to get lost.


Eli continues to dislike Swiss-style cheeses. This is unfortunate because France's default inexpensive cheese is emmenthal. It's funny how expensive and special emmenthal is in the States, but then cheddar is very pricey here. The French just don't do much orange cheese, but Eli does, so we end up buying him grocery-store mimolette.

Ally had a pretty good day at the archive. She ended up going out to dinner at Le Nord, another Bocuse brasserie, with her family. Maybe you'll find out how that was. The rest of us had chicken curry that I made. Actually only I had chicken curry, because Vic doesn't like chicken and Candie doesn't like curry. My secret for good curry in France is Uncle Ben's sauce. Yes, there's a wide range of Uncle Ben's products that are not sold in the United States.