LYON

We had recently had it so easy with trains that we didn't even think about having to book in advance for our trains to Marseille and then to Lyon.  This meant we had a 3-4 hour wait in total and didn't end up arriving in Lyon until about 8pm.

Zillions of years ago, the Romans built the city of Lugdunum on the slopes of the Fourviere.  Today, Lyon's 'hill of prayer' is topped by the iconic Basilique Notre Dame de Fourviere, a really beautiful church that looks down over Vieux Lyon (old town). 

Our hostel was half way up this hill and was a real bitch to get to with our ginormous suitcases, but we finally made it.  Waiting until 9pm, we were flabbergasted to hear that we would be staying in separate boys and girls only rooms.  Anna was lucky and had a couple of nice Aussies in her room, whilst I dipped out a bit and had a couple of freakish weirdo's in mine, including one American who was a maths lecture at the University of Lyon and possibly the greatest nerd the world has ever seen.

                                 

                                             Anna not happy Jan

After getting over our sleeping arrangements, we rugged up (the first official day of autumn was a cold one!) and headed down to the old town to find a meal.  Lyon is said to be the gastronomical capital of France, so we were pretty excited to get stuck into its table of piggy-driven dishes and other lavish delicacies.

We settled on L'Amphitryon which was a small little family run restaurant that had really cool pig related paraphernalia all over its walls.  Our main meals were actually a bit of a let down, but the huge dish of 'gratin au dauphinois' that accompanied them was a delicious bowl of creamy potato heaven.

The red wine made us really tired and by the time we trudged back up to the hostel, it was nudging midnight.  Anna enjoyed a good night's sleep, whilst I had to work my way through what seemed like half of Mumbai standing out in the corridors and then try and get to sleep whilst listening to them chitter-chatter for hours.

standing outside Cathedrale Saint-Jean Baptiste de Lyon

We were both happy with the cold weather the next day because Anna was just sick of the heat and I was looking for any opportunity to wear my new jumper!

Saone River

Our first stop was one of the best food markets we have been to, it had everything you could dream of!

giant oysters

these chickens and roast potatoes smelt so good, we were definitely coming back for lunch

The hostel's breakfast was ordinary at best, so I was still terribly hungry.  I had a bit of fruit and when these apple pie's presented themselves, I devoured one so quickly I thought I was going to get indigestion!

If only there was a microwave and cream, I would have eaten them all

plenty of figs!

looking across the river Saone and up the hill to Fourviere

Walking through the market along the river Saone, it just kept going and going, it was amazing.  It had to finish somewhere, and when it did, we walked away from the market towards the largest clear square (ie. without any patches of greenery) in Europe, Place Bellecour.  Measuring 62,000m sq. it really was massive, but with a lack of greenery, it felt like a huge tennis court and really just a waste of space.

Looking up at it many times already in one morning, we thought it was about time we got the funicular up the hill to Fourviere to check out the Basilique Notre Dame de Fourviere.

We weren't really that interested in the church, as we have now seen so many that they need to be extra special for us to give a hoot about them, but we were interested in the views out over Lyon which definitely were extra special.

Back down the funicular we went to the old town for our next item on Guida's to-do-list, Lyon's "traboules".

Traboule courtyard

Traboules are a type of passageway and are primarily associated with the city of Lyon, with the first ones thought to have been built in the 4th century.  The layout of Vieux Lyon is such that there are very few connecting streets running perpendicular to the Saone river.  The traboules allowed workmen and craftsmen to transport clothes and other textiles through the city while remaining sheltered from inclement weather.

Nowadays, the traboules are tourist attractions, and over 40 are free and open to the public.  This is kind of weird because the majority of these traboules are on private property, serving as entrances to local apartments and a lot of them open up into private courtyards.  I certainly wouldn't want tourists wandering through my private living area!

Walking back down the main street of the old town, we came across some tasty looking sweets and thought we better give one a try.  The line outside the patisserie implied that it was a pretty good establishment which further enticed us inside!

Our next stop was a real highlight.  A local specialty in Lyon is painted walls, with over 150 giant murals on walls all over town depicting famous people and historical events.

The best and most famous is 'La Fresque des Lyonnaise' which covers an entire building of almost 600m sq. and depicts 31 dead and living people from in and around Lyon.

We had a lot of fun playing around with the camera trying to absorb ourselves into the painting!

little old lady! (dumb & dumber)

getting my picture taken

this was a separate painting, but Anna couldn't help but pose for this one

Looking at our watches, it was close to 2pm and definitely time for lunch.  We found a great little cafe in the old town that had a really good menu.  The lasagne I had was as close to perfection as possible and easily the best I have had (sorry Mum!) and our coffee's were perfect!

We felt like we had covered a huge portion of the city and our feet were really sore, but we still had a few hours left in the day, so rather than go back to the hostel, we went and saw a movie.  Praying that the new Jason Bourne flick was out, we were let down to find the only one worth seeing that was in English was Expendables 2.  We knew it would be shit, but we saw it anyway and quite enjoyed it for what it was.

view of Lyon from the terrace of our hostel

An hour or so rest and then showers etc. at the hostel and we were back in the old town searching for dinner.  We were eager to have gratin au dauphinois again after the night before and made that the criteria for choosing a restaurant.  Unfortunately this proved harder than we imagined and we walked around in circles for a good hour before we finally just said stuff it and sat down at one that looked semi decent.

The 'Lyonnaise salad' (lettuce, bacon, poached egg, croutons, dressing) was pretty plain but damn it was good and our main meals of Lyonnaise style sausage with gratin au dauphinois was also really good.

We had ordered the 18 euro entree, main and desert meal which meant we also had to fit in desert afterwards.  There was no way I wasn't going for the nutella and raspberry jam crepe, whereas Anna went for the more healthy (I think??) cheese platter.

Coming home that night, I again had to deal with a plethora of Indians hanging around like a bad smell (literally!).  Thankfully this night they weren't so loud and I was able to nod off pretty quickly.

The next day we headed for the Cathedrale Saint-Jean Baptiste de Lyon because we were told that at 11am, 1pm, 2pm and 4pm, the clock did something fancy.  We got there a few minutes before 11am and stood out the front watching the clock, hoping it was going to be something worth hurrying down the hill for...........It got to 11:05am and nothing had happened, so we just assumed whatever was supposed to happen was really crap and we just didn't even notice it.
We walked inside the church to check it out and at the other end there was a large group of people and we realised that there was another clock inside, a large astronomical clock, and that was the one we were supposed to be watching, derrrrrrr!

Unfazed by our apparent stupidity, we hopped on the metro train, bound for the La Croix-Rousse area. It is on another hill on the other side of the river and although there were a couple of decent views, the best part about going there was a little patisserie we found that had a big jam tart that tasted just like Mums, it was bloody good!

Fontaine Bartholdi on the left and in the background is the Hotel de Ville Lyon, the city hall

On 20 April 1857, the Bordeaux city council decided to hold a competition to create a fountain for one of its squares.  Frederic Bartholdi, then aged 23, won the contest, however the city of Bordeaux decided not to carry out his project.
After Bartholdi had created the Statue of Liberty in New York in 1886, the Mayor of Bordeaux contacted him, but Bartholdi basically told him to get stuffed.  He was finally persuaded to start his project in 1988, but it was deemed too expensive and therefore sold to Lyon.

The Fontaine Bartholdi was eventually put at Place des Terreaux and is still there today.  The fountain depicts France as a female seated on a chariot controlling the four great rivers of France, represented by wildly rearing and plunging horses.

By now we had covered nearly all there was to see in Lyon, but we still had half a day left.  There was only one thing to do........go shopping!

I came across a cool shop that amongst other things, had some great rain jackets that were perfect for both the golf course and the footy.  The only problem was that there were so many different colours, I had real trouble trying to pick one.  In the end it hurt my wallet, but I had to buy two of them - one was a white, purple and aqua one (golf course) and one was red and royal blue in the same design as the Dees jumper, just perfect for a rainy day at the footy!

walking back up the hill to our hostel

That night we found a really cute little restaurant and had probably the best meal of our time in Lyon.  Again we ordered the entree, main and desert offer, because it was such good value.

salad, potatoes and cheese for entree

juicy seared sirloin steak with caramelised onion garnish, a small serving of gratin au dauphinois and something else weird that I think was a bit like polenta but Anna says it was more like a zucchini flower frittata 

beanie at the dinner table, it must have been cold!

We shivered our way back up to the hostel after dinner as we needed to back our bags and have everything ready for a reasonably early departure the next morning to Switzerland.

view of Lyon at night from the hostel terrace

NICE

No wonder so many young French people aspire to live in Nice, whilst the tourists, including Anna and myself, keep flooding in.  Shimmering shores, the very best of Mediterranean food, a charming and historical old town and great shopping!

We stayed at the elegant and very sociable Hostel Villa Saint Exupery Gardens, which I later found out is where Willboss Benjamin worked when he lived in Nice for a while.  The hostel is a converted monastery and is situated in a private garden about 4km from the centre of town.  It has been voted in the top 10 hostels in the world 5 out of the last 5 years, and you could see why.  

there are so many Aussies working at the Saint Exupery, they even have an arrow pointing to Sydney!

The hostel had a great communal area, both inside and outside, plenty of activities on offer, a great breakfast and bar area and although it was 4km from the town centre, they had a free shuttle bus every 20 minutes that would drop you at the nearest tram stop.  Nice's tram system was so good.  Literally every 6 minutes a tram would arrive, so we had no qualms about staying so far away.

We unpacked and had a short rest and after getting the shuttle bus and tram, made a beeline for the Promenade des Anglais, Nice's curvaceous palm-lines seafront that follows its busy pebble beach for 6km from the city centre to the airport.

The beach was not the nicest as it was chock-a-block full of people, chairs, umbrellas, restaurants and even a little rubbish, however the water was a beautiful blue and there were plenty of great looking buildings on the other side of the road.

Nice's most famous Hotel Negresco

With Nice's airport being so close, literally every 5-10 minutes there was a new plane coming into land.  A lot of these looked like they were private jets, but there were also plenty of passenger airlines that made heaps of noise and added to the great atmosphere. It was really cool having these huge planes looking like they were going to land in the water and we thought about trying to find a place where we could get right up close to them ala Wayne's World in the coming days.

After walking around the beach for a while, we headed for, and lost ourselves in the old town's tangle of 18th-century pedestrian passages and alleyways, historic churches and hole-in-the-wall joints selling Nicois specialties.  We ended up in Cours Saleya, running parallel to the seafront, it hosts one of France's most vibrant food markets, but at nighttime it turns into an atmospheric area of diners and drinkers.

Anna saw a bar/pub that she recognised from last time she was in Nice, so we thought it a good idea to stop for a beer before finding a spot for dinner.  The cider tap had run dry so I ordered Anna a "Monaco" which was beer, lemonade and grenadine syrup.  It was so good, I wish I had ordered one for myself as well.

Cours Saleya to the left

Cours Saleya to the right

Certainly not your typical French meal, we came across a burger and steak joint and couldn't resist.  My burger was the biggest thing I have ever seen and as hard as I tried, I couldn't finish it!  Anna polished off a beautiful piece of steak, but by the end of it, she was almost as full as I was.

Lonely Planet had suggested Nice's "most fabulous" glacier (ice-cream maker) and although there was no way that either of us had any room for once, it was worth seeing.  Your classic predictable flavours were there, but you also had the chance to indulge in taste sensations such as tomato-basil, black tomato, rosemary, jasmine, rhubarb, lavender, ginger and my top choice, avocado!

Nice's main square, Place Massena, is surrounded by 3-4 storey buildings all painted in the same red/orange colour and all decorated with green window shutters.  It is a huge area and a real sight at night time when it is all lit up.  There was also some sort of art display on where there were these buddha type figures on top of these poles that would change colour every few minutes, it was pretty cool.

Temperature may have still been warm enough to get around in shorts and a singlet, but you could tell that summer was coming to an end as it was the first time in ages where the sky had been well and truly overcast.  There's not a whole lot to do in Nice in terms of sightseeing, which was fine by us as we were very happy to just wander around and do some shopping.

the view from our corm-room window

We had already had a decent breakfast provided by the hostel, but we came across a great cafe and hadn't had a coffee yet, so in we went.  The coffee was superb, but the apple pastry was where it was at, probably the best one we have had on tour.......and we've had a lot!

We spent a fair bit of time in "Gallaries Layfayette" which is France's version of Myer or David Jones.  Anna was on level three and I was on level two and usually the away it goes is that after I look at the men's section, I go and try to find Anna who is invariably taking much longer than I am.  

Not this time!  

I was having a ball going through all the fantastic stuff they had on level 2 and when Anna came to find me I was making my first purchase of the day, a beautiful canary yellow Ralph Lauren polo shirt (that will go perfectly with my green pants on the golf course haha).

I didn't buy anything from Vilebrequin (way too expensive), but I love their sign when they are closed - gone tanning!

Not more than half an hour later and I was making my second and third purchases of the day, a couple of really sweet t-shirts from a pretty trendy store.  After this day and my big purchase in Monaco, I was on fire and Anna was supremely jealous, but I was just making up for lost ground after all the stuff she bought in Italy!

We found a great salad and sandwich joint for lunch which also had free internet, so we were able to check the usual  Facebook/Twitter/Instagram/email and the footy scores and then head out for the second half of the day.

There were a couple of beach volleyball matches going on which we stopped to watch for a while, before we headed towards the eastern end of the beach and then around the corner and into the port.

It was a great walk as we were able to watch the planes coming in as they were literally flying right over our heads and because they only had 6km to go before landing, they were really low.

The port was nice, but nothing special compared to the ones in Antibes and Monaco that we had visited  during the past week, so we didn't spend much time there, however it was a fairly decent walk to get back into the centre of town and by the time we got there it was close to 5pm and we were ready to call it a day.

Chilling at the hostel for a while gave us the chance to catch up on some blogging (Lachie) and watching Sons of Anarchy (Anna - her new favourite show) and with beers so cheap from the hostel bar, I was even able to indulge in some nice ales before showering and then heading off to dinner.

Anna was impressed with the grass tram track area!

Another shuttle bus and another tram into town and we were back at Cours Saleya where we had been the night before.  When we saw the size of the pasta dishes being served at "La Favola" (not Fevola!), not even a half an hour wait was to deter us from going anywhere else.

Being so hungry, we foolishly loaded up on bread whilst we were waiting which was to seriously hamper our effort to actually finish our meals....will we ever learn!

Anna's pasta with clams was possibly the biggest bowl of pasta for one person I have ever seen and my rigatoni al forne, whilst not as big, felt equally as filling.

what a waste of food!

We both put in really piss weak efforts at finishing our meals to the point where we were almost embarrassed when the waiter took the meals away.  We had to reassure him that we really enjoyed the meals haha!

Our bellies were so full that we needed at least an hour of walking around before we felt like hopping on the tram and heading home.

Our dorm-room stank the next morning as there were a couple of Brazilian lads who had burnt the candle at both ends, having a huge night on the town, but then having to leave early in the morning.  I remember those days well haha.

Luckily we were up early enough the next day to get down to the Cours Saleya food market.  As the Lonely Planet book suggested, it is France's largest fruit market and we weren't questioning that when we arrived, it was huge!

olives almost as far as the eye can see!

different flavoured sugars

plenty of spices and salts, including one from the Murray River

weird looking eggplant

After spending a solid hour or two at the market, including devouring a punnett of delicious raspberries and strawberries, we went back to the same salad and sandwich shop as we had been the day before to get some take-away lunch.  I also called home and spoke to the whole McDonald clan who were all at 36a Drake Street for Grandmothers and Dads birthday dinner, it was great to speak to them all, but hard work with so many people shouting at the same time haha!

High up on the hill on the eastern point of the beach promenade is Parc du Chateau, which affords great views over Vieux Nice (old town), the port, the beachfront and the planes coming in overhead.

After getting the lift up to the top of the park (we both cbf'd walking!), we gawked at the sensational views and then set-up shop on a cozy little grassy spot and laid down to watch the comings and goings, read our books and have lunch.

For the rest of the afternoon we had planned to hire bikes and ride to the end of the 6km Promenade des Anglais, hoping that we could secure a spot to watch the planes coming rolling in.

there was some nasty Byron Pickett like clouds approaching!

As it was August 31, it was the last day of summer and almost like clockwork, the weather started to change and by the time we had reached the airport, the wind had picked up and there were some nasty looking clouds coming our way.  We also noticed that the planes had stopped flying in and were either being re-directed to another airport, or coming into Nice from a different angle.

Giving up on the idea of seeing any planes up close, we stopped to watch a few of the locals battle it out on the petanque fields and then headed for the bike shop, hoping to make it back in time before the heavens opened up.

Immediately awe noticed a change in the riding conditions.  We had gone from riding at an easy going pace with the wind behind us, to a butt clenching snail pace, battling it out in the teeth of the wind.  Luckily it was on 6km though and before long we were handing back the bikes with dry clothes.

Surprisingly, it didn't start bucketing down until we had got back to the hostel.  However, once it started it didn't let up and we made the right call that night to stay in and have dinner prepared by the hostel kitchen.

Milanese style pork with spaghetti was the meal on offer and for 7.50 euro, it was great value and accompanied with a few "ottweiler pils" beers, it was a great feast.

We met a couple of American blokes, who although a little nerdy, were decent blokes and it was interesting to chat about the differences between our countries.  We had to laugh when one of them asked us if we had heard of Facebook, seriously, how far away do they think Australia is??!!

Ottweiler Pils beer - sounds like a dog

We had a 3-4 hour trip to Lyon the next day, so we called it quits around midnight and went to bed listening to the torrential rain outside.