Bought a €5 daily travel ticket which includes travel on the buses, trains, trams and (bonus) funiculars in Lyon and we certainly got our money's worth throughout the day. Started with a train trip from Garibaldi Metro station which is only 600 metres from where we're staying to Place Bellecour - one of the largest town squares in Europe. Nice sunny day but a bit chilly (only six degrees when we set out). After having a quick breakfast (fresh croissants - yum!) in the square I went to the Silk Museum. Lyon is renowned for its production of silk. Not everything in the museum was silk though with the oldest thing there being a baby's linen outfit dating from ancient Egyptian times. But the vast majority of the displays were silk items of some description like dresses, capes, decorative embroideries, upholstery fabrics and so on from all over Europe. My two favourite things were a 15th century Italian dress embroidered with a pomegranate motif ("very trendy" at the time according to the guidebook) and a 'local' lilac-coloured upholstery fabric embroidered with an hydrangea motif. The embroidery stitches on everything were so fine that I could barely make them out even when I put my beady little eyes right up to the clear perspex protecting the fabrics. I was very lucky to be able to visit this museum now as there was a temporary exhibition of Hermes silk which started less than three weeks ago. Such beautifully patterned silk! They also had a dozen Hermes scarf squares - the edges hadn't been hemmed - from this year's 'Fleurs et Pappilons' design (same pattern but in twelve different colour combinations) which were only held along the top so you could touch them. Which I most certainly did - all twelve of them. Actually, if I'm going to be honest, I literally fondled them! Well it's the closest I'm ever going to get to a Hermes scarf. Of course, I had to check out the gift shop as I was leaving the museum. There were a multitude of scarves for sale. Different mixtures of wool and silk or cotton and silk and some pure silk ones. However there were also a few which were 100% POLYESTER!!! Why, oh why, oh why, oh why, would anybody come to Lyon and buy a polyester scarf??? You shouldn't spend too much of your day wondering if I managed to resist the urge to buy a silk scarf while I was in Lyon. That would be a massive waste of your time.
We then had a wander through the Renaissance district which was gorgeous with, obviously, lots of very old beautiful buildings before getting on one of the two funiculars in Lyon to go up to the Fourviere Basilica. Neither of us had any idea what we were about to see. The exterior of this basilica is amazing, and the views over Lyon from its terraces incredible, but it is the interior which is truly magnificent. The ceilings and walls are very nearly completely covered with the most sublime mosaic pictures. You could hear people catching their breath and exclaiming at the beauty of it all as they walked in. That's after we'd done the same thing ourselves!
We then caught the other funicular to go to the ruins of a Roman Amphitheatre. Although the main back wall is gone the acoustics are still somehow perfect. If you stood on the stage and just whispered you could be clearly heard anywhere in the stands. There were quite a few kids around trying this out! But how did they figure out the best placement of everything so the acoustics worked so well in the days (many, many days) before computers? I don't understand. Just like I can't get my head around how most of the buildings were designed and constructed before there was such a thing as 3D graphics computer programs and engines and stuff.
We were then going to go to the St Just church but we must have got our funiculars mixed up (easy mistake to make I'm sure and nothing to do with being directionally challenged) as we ended up at the basilica again. It was getting cooler outside again by this stage and it had already been a long day with heaps of steps at the Roman ruins so we decided we didn't need to see another church, partly because we didn't think it could surpass the magnificence of the basilica anyway.
