Lyon - stairs and cathedrals

In our sights today were the main sites of our area, Notre Dame du Fourviere Cathedral, the Roman theatre, and St Jean's Cathedral. Between us and those sites was a lot of climbing of stairs and hills (150m elevation up and down over about 5km. Oh, for the flatness of Amsterdam!).

Our first challenge was the climb to Notre Dame Cathedral, made harder by a few navigational errors, which added a staircase or two. The Cathedral is impressive and imposing and can be seen from most places in Lyon. Inside it is ornate and opulent. The pictures describe it better than words but it was worth the climb.

Next, we visited the nearby Gallo Roman Theatres, which were built 2000 years ago and could hold 10,000 people in their day! It looks like it is still used as an open-air theatre today, and it is amazing to think of today's theatre-goers walking the same road as those 2000 years ago (I hope they wore good shoes!).

From there, we headed back to Vieux Lyon (via a few more navigational errors) to St Jean's, which is older and less ornate but no less impressive than Notre Dame, and home to the Astronomical clock. The 650 year old clock is a feat of engineering and features multiple dials: The Astrolabe Dial which "depicts the geocentric view of the universe, with the sun and moon revolving around the earth. It also tracks the moon phases and the rising of stars over Lyon’s horizon."; a minute dial; automaton figures (for entertainment, presumably); and the Perpetual Calendar, which shows the day, month, year, and religious holidays and is designed to run for 66 years before needing updates (it's good until 2089 at the moment). So much information in one clock! We weren't there at the right time to see/hear it chime, but we were there to hear a tour guide explaining it, which made it all the more interesting.

We had one more staircase in us (see video) and so we headed back to the apartment, picking up some beautiful French bread on the way from a local boulangerie (at half the price you'd would pay in Australia for the same) and had an apartment lunch of bread, terrine, ham, cheese and our Chateau de Chillon wine. It was nice to eat at home for a change.

For dinner we headed across the river to Rue Mercier for another delicious dinner, this time chicken cordon bleu and a petit assiette du trois fromage. Our stroll home was rewarded by the sight of Notre Dame Cathedral illuminated. The perfect end to the day.Read more