Lyon: puppets and cokeheads

The next day in the Mary and Eve France Adventures brings us to the travel day between Dijon and Lyon.  One thing that I had been kind of disapointed about in Dijon was that Eve and I had been unable to find the Good Luck Owl that was supposedly near the Notre Dame cathedral. (I think every town in France has a Notre Dame.)  But on our way out of town we passed a bunch of French tourists touching a small lump on the outside of the church wall.  So this was the Owl!  I'd thought it would be a stand-alone statue for some reason, but no.  So wonder we hadn't been able to spot it.

Nothin' but blue skies from now on.

The train from Dijon to Lyon is easy enough, but as I mentioned in a previous post we did not realize that Lyon has not one but two train stations.  I had gotten directions to our hotel from the other one.  So after wandering around in an increasingly confused haze, wondering why we couldn't find any of the streets we wanted on any of the posted maps in the station, we humped it into a nice hotel and begged for help.  Which we graciously received, in the form of a map and instructions as to how to catch the tram from this train station to the other one.

So with only a minor delay we finally did find Hotel Victoria.  The common areas were kind of sketchy, but our room was clean and bright -- with one double bed (I'd requested two separate twins) and one of those awesome teeny all-in-one bathrooms... so not exactly perfect but at least it was all ours!  We set out to explore and quickly learned that our hotel was not in the best part of town!  Poor Evie saw a dude snorting coke on the corner and to get to the rest of Lyon we legit had to go through this tunnel that smelled like a latrine, probably because it was often used as one.  Don't get me wrong, once we got into the right part of town, Lyon is beautiful.  We just weren't in that part.

Our hotel was just a short 35-minute walk from here!

So we cut our exploring short, and went to enjoy a couple of drinks at the oldest restaurant in Lyon, which is right across the street from our hotel and doubtless has had an uncomfortable series of decades watching the neighborhood around it steadily degrade.

Happy to no longer be in the tunnel.

After, we picked up some cheap wine and headed back to the sanctuary of our room, hanging out the window and playing a drinking game which I invented, wherein we took a drink every time we saw something unsavory happen outside.  We may have gotten ourselves a lil bit tipsy sticking to this rule.  We also had no end of a good time watching all of these older well-to-do couples come up for their dinner at Lyon's famous oldest restaurant, and slowly stare around them in dawning horror.  Prostitutes, drug dealers, and all-around creepy-looking folks were in abundance, but at least it stopped being off-putting and started being hilarious.

For our actual day in Lyon, we headed off to have our usual total saturation of museums and churches.  It was Saturday, and we also came across several cool street markets, including one crazy bazaar that reminded me so much of Dry Bridge in Tbilisi.

Everything from stuffed badgers to severed doll heads

We had one of our better lunches in Lyon, at a small place down one of the narrow back streets.  They specialized in tartines, which are open-faced sandwiches piled so high with stuff you need to eat it with a knife and fork.  I opted for the chicken curry and actually got one of my only tastes of heat in this country!

After lunch, we caught a tram up a big hill to see yet another church up there, and also get some really excellent views of Lyon.

Saint Something-Or-Other 

One of the things I really wanted to do in Lyon was visit the Puppet Museum there.  We walked down the hill and actually were able to find it without too much trouble.  I knew this stuff would be creepy, because puppets are, as a rule, freaking creepy.  But I readily admit I did not expect them to be this creepy.

How is this not supposed to be horrifying?

Definitely NOT the stuff of nightmares.

We managed not to be taken captive by the world's most terrifying puppet collection and headed to a sidewalk cafe for crepes and cider to help us recover.

Then it was just walking around the city a bit, picking up salads for dinner at the market, and an early night.  We had a busy day ahead of us, heading to the Alps.