This was our last day in France, so we had breakfast in the flat and then took the metro north and walked (down a lonnnnnng hill) to Île Barbe—a small island in the middle of the Saône that had come up earlier in the trip, but we had never quite made it to.
It was…disappointing. The kicker was that half of the (did I say small) island is private property and was not open. So, essentially, we saw…a playground. On the way, we came across a permanent art installation called Le Belvédère by Jean-Michel Othoniel. It’s… a long metal ramp on a dock that goes up to a small gazebo decorated with colorful globes. We were underwhelmed.
As the island of a bit of a bust, we grabbed city bikes and road back down to Old Lyon for lunch and then stopped in Cathédrale Saint-Jean-Baptiste, which we had walked passed many times but never stepped into. The cathedral houses a range of precious objects, as well as a massive, autonomic clock that was built in the 14th century (we’d thought it was still operating, but it did not appear to be).
We then headed back to the apartment for a bit of a break before heading back to drinks at one of the bars on the Rhône, and then heading back to the Brasserie for dinner (Lucy and Benton had gone earlier in the week and thought it was worth returning to so Tim could experience it; it was!).
An interesting/memorable experience of the day:
Benton: Everyone took a nap (only 1 of 3 fully intentionally)
Tim: The write-up of Le Belvédère on the riverbank indicating how it was designed to be “integrated with nature,” and the consensus that it was pretty gaudy and decidedly not so.
