‘Twas another day where we managed to leave the apartment at…noon (slow risers, laundry, indecision), but we did make the call that we’ll stick around in Lyon for a couple of extra days.
First off, we headed by bike and by funicular to the Ancient Theatre of Fourvière—a pair of amphitheaters built by the Romans and still in use today (both had stages set up and were prepping for performances). Right next to the theaters was the Gallo-Roman Museum of Lyon-Fourvière—a museum that covered the Roman history of Lyon. It was built in a rectangular downward-sloping ramp so that only the first floor was above ground. It was okay—it took a while, but was a little hard to follow and a little repetitive.
From there, we tried to grab some lunch, but we had missed the lunch window, so everywhere we stopped was in the window between lunch and dinner (see first note in today’s update). So, instead, we just walked to La Basilique Notre Dame de Fourvière (which we’d been to a couple of days earlier, but not inside) to check out the inside of that.
Then we walked down through the gardens and got a very late (and heavy… a “bouchon” meal) lunch in Old Lyon. We had a few options as to how to wrap up the day, and we opted to visit the Musée Cinéma & Miniature de Lyon, which was just around the corner. We were there right up until closing time (19:00)—basically had to pick up our pace a bit to finish that out. It’s really two museums. The first six or seven of exhibit halls are about special effects and costumes and prosthetics used in making movies, and they had a lot of examples from actual movies and TV shows. Those were really interesting and impressive. Then, the last few exhibit halls are “miniatures”—various rooms meticulously constructed…but at 1/12 scale (mostly). These were mind-blowing—the level of detail, the lighting, and the overall effect (some of the pictures we took look like they were just taken inside a full-sized room rather than through a glass hole in the wall).
Simon texted during the tour that there was a free Japanese Afro Funk bank playing up at the national opera starting at 19:00, so, when we finished at the museum, we walked up to give that a listen. It was pretty cool!
Our party was starting to fade at that point, so we just took a leisurely walk back to the apartment—eventually stopping for a drink in Bellecour before heading on to find a bagel shop so Benton could get a light dinner.
An interesting/memorable experience of the day:
Benton: Tim’s fromage (cheese) for dessert at our late lunch—heavily assisted by me in selecting which cheese, but what he got was what seemed like a bowl of sour cream or ranch dressing.
Tim: Various mishaps: walking wayyyy more than planned in search of bagels (and coming up with a few pastries instead); grabbing a city bike that rode well…until the chain fall off and, later, the seat dropped all the way down.
