Lyon & Environs

From London we headed to Lyon. We had a late evening arrival, so we’d booked a room at the Moxy Hotel right in the airport. Our flight was delayed a little over an hour, and then the passport control at Lyon was backed up, with several flights having just arrived, the EU-only lanes closed, no automated passport machines operating, and just two agents trying to handle perhaps 250 tired travelers in the line. After quite a long wait one of the French folks near the front of the line started yelling, echoed by another behind us in line. We thought there was going to be a riot! Eventually they opened the automated machines for French passport holders only, and we eventually got through and made our way to the hotel.

The next morning we picked up our little Peugot 208 hybrid (they didn’t have the EV we’d reserved) and made our way through Lyon and then up the Saone to Miserieux, where Mette & Patrick have a lovely old farmhouse that they’ve made into a wonderful estate. They’ve been buying adjacent tracts over the years, so they can have their horses there (though the horses were away during our visit). In addition they have a ton of walnut trees, so we had lots of walnut bread, etc. Mette is Gitte’s sister; we’d met her a couple of times at Rick and Gitte’s childrens’ weddings.

We alternated day trips and hanging out with Mette & Patrick at their place, so to see everything from our busy week you also need to check out the posts for the Musée des Confluences (below), Annecy, and Beaujolais.

Tuesday after driving through Lyon, we took the rest of the day off, with a nap in the afternoon, and a lovely dinner prepared for us by Mette. There was also champagne and wine, “leftovers” from their son’s wedding the previous month.

On Wednesday we went to see the Musée des Confluences, which Ben had expected to be about the development of the communities around the two rivers, but instead it was the successor to a string of museums that had been in the area, and it now has exhibits of everything from the prehistoric to the current day. In addition, there was a fascinating temporary exhibit of photographs from North Korea. See the photographer’s post here and another here. See photos of the exhibits in this gallery.

We also visited the legendary Monluc prison, where so many jews and French resistance fighters had met their dooms in WWII. This was not the prison Ben’s mother’s family had “visited” before being bribed out by Felix Goldschmidt (for the whole story, read “Three Sisters” by Ben’s sister Celia Clement). The museum is pretty sobering.

After the museum we went back into the old town and walked around a bit, admiring the architecture and active street life, as well as the cathedrals along the Saone. Then we found dinner at a nice little restaurant called Décalé, which means “offbeat”. And then we headed back up to Mierieux.

Thursday was rainy – the first rain they’d had in months – so we stuck around the local area, with Mette showing us the chateau in S. Bernard and taking us to lunch at a restaurant near the Saone, where we shared a bucket of fried eperlans (tiny smelt). Mette had grenouille after that and we stayed with more conventional meals, though we did sample hers.

Friday we went up toward the Alps. See the post on Annecy for more details.

Saturday we took a drive up through Beaujolais, which has many medeival villages among the vineyards. See this post for that.

Sunday was our last day, so we took Mette to lunch at the Restaurant de Rancé. Again a wonderful meal, featuring an amuse bouche of salmon mousse (no Monty Python jokes here). For dessert we had Crème Brûlée, which was caramelized as a flambé with what they called “pastry alcohol” instead of the usual blowtorch, very impressive and it worked great.

After lunch we headed back to Lyon airport, whew we returned the car (turned out we averaged 40mpg – just over 7 litres ‘ 100km) and tried to find the TAP desk to check our bags. Not to be found, but eventually we located the info desk and they said that it would appear on a screen above a station sometime soon. The flight itself was, of course, delayed, but we still got home before midnight.