On the Road is a weekday feature spotlighting reader photo submissions.
From the exotic to the familiar, whether you’re traveling or in your own backyard, we would love to see the world through your eyes.
MollyS
In October, I went back to Paris to visit my daughter and son-in-law. While working on her Ph.D. in French literature, my daughter spent several summers and a few semesters in Paris. She met and married a terrific young Frenchman and they now live in the 17th arrondissement, north of the world-famous attractions along the Seine.
For this visit, she and I decided to spend the weekend in Lyon, France’s second-largest metro area, some 245 miles southeast of Paris. Lyon was established by the Romans in 43 BC, where the Rhône and Saône rivers meet. The city became the capital of the Gauls during the Roman Empire. Today Lyon is a UNESCO World Heritage site and the gastronomic capital of France. Once a world center for the production of silk, Lyon is also the home of the Lumière brothers, inventors of the modern cinemascope.
We spent most of our two days in Vieux Lyon, the city’s oldest section, located in the Fourvière district, across the Saôme. At the time we were there, 1 US dollar was about equal to 1 euro, which made shopping, eating, etc., a very good deal.
We took the bullet train from Paris to Lyon. The TVG, or Train à Grande Vitesse, is France’s high-speed train network. The first line, from Paris to Lyon, began service in 1981. Today the TVG network connects major cities across France (with about 110 million passengers a year) and into neighboring countries. The regular 6-hour train trip took 2 hours, as our train reached speeds of 190 mph. We left Paris from the Gare de Lyon, on first-class reserved tickets that were 20 euros each way. This picture was taken at the Lyon station, the day we zipped back to Paris.
This public-domain map shows Lyon as it was in 1894. Located northwest of the French Alps, Lyon was built where the Rhône and Saône rivers converge around a peninsula, le Presqu’île, that lies between two large hills. The northern hill, la Croix-Rousse, was the traditional home to Lyon’s small silk workshops. The western hill, Fourvière, is dominated by the Basilica of Notre-Dame de Fourvière. Fourvière, as well as part of the Presqu’île and much of la Croix-Rousse, are part of the Lyon UNESCO World Heritage Site. Vieux Lyon, or the old city, is also in Fourvière. Modern Lyon and most of its population are located in the large flat area east of the Rhône. If you look in the map’s lower left corner, you’ll see that North is actually where we would expect to find East. For the correct N-S orientation, tip your laptop, phone, or iPad to the left!
The Rhône begins 6,000 feet upstream from Lake Geneva, Switzerland, and runs some 500 miles to the Mediterranean Sea. At Lyon, the river’s flow is 22,600 cubic feet of water per second, although it certainly didn’t look that turbulent!
The Saône originates in eastern France, flowing south for about 300 miles until it meets the Rhône at Lyon.
Participants in the French Revolution were determined to establish a secular state, and in their zeal, they were particularly tough on religious statues. Many saints and holy men and women lost their heads … along with much of the human populace.
Lyon’s buildings are quite different from Paris’s Haussmann-era, pale-gray limestone and wrought-iron-railing construction. Many Lyonnaise buildings have terra-cotta roof tiles and are painted a soft pink or orange. You’ll see a lot of curved arches, but few streetside railings or balconies.
The No. 8 door opens into one of Lyon’s traboules, secret passageways that go through buildings and courtyards, up and down staircases, and out to other streets. They are hidden shortcuts, hundreds of years old, that allowed citizens to bypass the hills and winding streets. No. 8 dates to 1530. There may be as many as 400 traboules but only 40 are open to the public. Traboule comes from the Latin for trans-ambulare or to pass through.
Going through the door, into the passageway.
No. 8’s interior courtyard, for a number of apartments. These apartments are not visible or accessible from the street.
A very old, not-in-use well, inside the No. 8 courtyard.
Wanderer
Very beautiful. Thanks for sharing. I would love to see France someday but can’t speak any French and think that might be an issue.
Wvng
My wife and daughter visited Lyon a few years ago. My daughter is a lover of all things fabric, and Lyon was heaven. Lyon is home to, possibly, the world’s first computer, A weaving machine controlled by “punch cards” that produced amazingly complex designs.
Steve in the ATL
@Wanderer: neither can Omnes and he had no trouble there
stinger
Wonderful! Thank you!
sab
What is the point of a traboule not open to the public? Edibburgh in Scotland also has them. I only just now learned from you the derivation of the word.
pluky
@Wvng:
The Jacquard loom.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacquard_machine
sab
@Steve in the ATL: No problem. Even if you speak French it won’t be up to their exacting standards so why bother.
JMG
Lyon is wonderful, isn’t it? My daughter lived there for a year in the early 2010s after she got out of college. Hope you had quenelles at a bouchon.
misswhatsis
@Wanderer: I speak a very little terrible French and I’ve found the French amazingly pleasant outside of Paris (and usually even in Paris). If you remember that Parisians are essentially New Yorkers you’ll be fine. Learn to say Bonjour when you enter a shop! Go, have a blast. It’s my favorite country.
WaterGirl
@MollyS: Love the buildings. And the idea of the secret passageways. Amazing.
@Wvng: @pluky: That’s really interesting!
Omnes Omnibus
@Steve in the ATL: Sale putain!
evodevo
@misswhatsis: Same here…I speak halting HS French and never had any trouble getting around (a phrase-book helps enormously – ESPECIALLY WITH ROAD SIGNS lol). if you attempt to speak the language, people quickly switch to English. Make sure you are polite, and always acknowledge the shopkeeper when you enter. It’s the French thing to do. We were in Paris for several days, and then drove all around the country from Rouen to Provence, and never encountered the European Vacation version of nasty salespersons/waitstaff…if you don’t act like a typical Ugly American, they will do all they can to help.
Steve in the ATL
@sab: putain de merde—c’est vrai!
@Omnes Omnibus: le zing, conard!
oatler
I’ve been coincidentally watching “Celine and Julie Go Boating” where our heroines scamper around 1975 Montmartre and some kinda Frenchy avenues..
evodevo
It’s debated among scholars, but one of the locations to which Herod Antipas and his wife Herodias were exiled by Caligula was supposedly Lyon (Lugdunum), though others have argued that it was another location in Gaul called Lugdunum Convenarum near the Pyrenees..
sab
Outside of Paris the French are really lovely people, even to Americans.
J R in WV
@Wanderer:
The time we spent in France was glorious, though we speak no French to speak of. More people speak English than you night think, and are happy to help out if you ask.
One exception, wife spoke to two more elderly women in her high school French, they thought she was rude and scolded her bitterly. They also blocked the sidewalk, and were angry that wife had the gall to ask them to let her by.
Rude folks everywhere I guess. Everyone else in the two weeks was great. All the food /wine was great. Even road side bar food and tapas was excellent — comparable to fine dining in the US. We started in Basque country of Spain, worked our way north. Took a ordinary train to Paris after the archaeological tour ended…
ETA: We used Google Translate for Spanish more than French, and people were delighted to see that, it was still pretty new at the time, 2016 or so. At one shop all the electronics were in small drawers and I needed to tell the shopkeeper what I needed.
JanieM
Both the pictures and the history / local culture notes give a vivid and varied sense of the place.
Thanks for taking us along.
Wanderer
@Steve in the ATL: Thanks, that’s good to know. Sorry for long response time – just back to the site.
Wanderer
@Wanderer: Thanks also to Misswhatsis and J R in WV.
MollyS
@Wanderer: Not speaking French is not a handicap in the large cities like Paris and Lyon. Most restaurant and retail-shop employees will have some English, at least enough the basics. My daughter is very fluent so as long as she’s with me, I’m ok. The most important detail to know, as a tourist, is that greeting the person at the door of the shop, store, etc as you enter is imperative. Even a fractured “bon jour” will do … no barrelling into the store, and no loud American voices, s’il vous plaît!
MollyS
@Wvng: We didn’t have enough time to visit the various fabric/silk museums and exhibits. Next time!
MollyS
@sab: Since most of the traboules go through private properties, perhaps there’s a privacy issue. There are plenty of small streets and passages so if you don’t know the traboules exist, you’ll do just fine.
MollyS
@evodevo: Exactly! Anyone can master “bon jour,” “bon soir,” “bonne journée,” what you can say while leaving a shop, the equivalent of “have a good day”, and “au revoir.” One tip … never say “adieu” in almost any conversation because it literally means “go to God” … said mainly when someone dies …
MollyS
@sab: I think inside Paris they’re generally fine, too, often just more harried and tired, like most big-city employees are. The only person my daughter ever had trouble with, in her years of coming to and then living in Paris, was a street-side crepe seller … he corrected her French (“mon dieu!”), displaying a serious lack of teeth. She was miffed for days …
MollyS
@JanieM: De rien!
Mike in Pasadena
The walls inside Lyon’s Notre Dame are covered with some of the most extensive and detailed mosaics I’ve ever seen other than two churches in Palermo, Sicily.
The Castle
That is a wonderful picture of one of the old puits. If only I had such a beautiful sink.
And I’m jealous you were able to traverse one of the traboules – I always wanted to do that.
Tis’ true that you can watch the architecture slowly change in France from the gray industrial north from to the terra cotta and pastel Mediterranean. It seemed to me to match the climactic change from rainy and cold north to the warm and sunny south.