Wednesday 20th – Tuesday 26th July
Well the Swiss weather has settled in here too! But “pas de problem” as the French say. The camping ground was great and there was food, weefee and wine…all available in the reception area. The convenience of being near the A6 was great for visits outside this busy city.
One day was spent travelling to the Provence region to explore Apt, Aix en Provence and St Rémy de Provence with a view to booking forward stays.
On Sunday we were totally glued to the télé! Cadel (Evans) fever had gripped France, Australia and ourselves. Our aussie flag was on the car (thanks Steve) as it drizzled down, but we were hoping for a win…and what a win it was!!!
OK…how many of you read “Le Petit Prince” in French classes at school? Lyon was the birthplace of author, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. As a famous author and pilot who was lost at sea during WWII we know there’s a memorial to him in the Pantheon in Paris, so we took the train into the city in search of memories of the great author. The train is driverless – we know because we were in the glass window of the first carriage. We’ve been warned about local parking - you know the drill - if you leave the handbrake off the French bump your car each end until they get parked! Anyway, we’d hoped to see a bit of St–Exupéry’s memorabilia, but apart from the airport and a few streets named after him we must have missed any connections.
The old part of Lyon is charming, well that was until we decided on a quiet coffee, when a new bride in stilettos came in from pounding the cobblestones with her man in a shiny suit ready for a photo shoot. In the coffee bar the photographer tried for the ultimate snap….he had them perched on the edge of a stool with magnum in hand when both came crashing to the floor…we were fairly concerned about the magnum, but luckily the bottle was saved - thank goodness.
OK, after that little drama we then trekked uphill to the heights of Lyon - to the arena - built in the Roman era.
We need to say a word here about the impact of Rome and its culture throughout France. Everywhere we go we see the relics and remnants of glorious Rome – the Roman baths, arenas, amphitheatres, the city walls, roads and aqueducts - some in disrepair, some destroyed by the bombings of WWII and some still a part of working, living towns. This is what’s left to remind us of a once all-powerful culture. Just imagine what has been lost because it wasn’t made of stone – this is like a modern chapter in the fossil record as we know it – we only get to see the durable bits – things made of rock and stone. The fabric, the books, the stories are largely lost.
Now, back to the arena in Lyon – Sam, you may know this Irish group – “Two Door Cinema Club” – they were doing a sound check in readiness for an open air rock concert….we can’t really comment on their noise, but we’d have to say that when we saw Angus & Julia Stone had been on the list of others on the Summer line up we were really sorry it hadn’t been them performing that day…..we would have lingered longer!
That afternoon we headed for more kultcha….so Janet the Lyon Princess headed for the Musée de Tissus. She tells me it wasn’t about Kleenex vs Sorbent but more about the silk fabrics and floral embroidery, for which Lyon was famous, and the making of costumes for the likes of King Louis XIV. Jim decided to practise his French in the foyer. The trade-off was that at the Musée Cinématographe Lumière, Janet would do likewise…so she sat in the foyer and practised French whilst Jim learnt about the Lumière brothers…arrrgh, where would Brangelina be without the Lumière brothers? …we can only dream…
