May 27, 2019 Rest Day Lyon

Today was the first day of a two day layover in Lyon.   We all slept in this morning. Not really late but late for the rest of the tour.   We were taking a hop on – hop off tour which started at 10:00 am from downtown.   So we were all up at 8:00 am and down to the metro by 9:00 am.  The metro here is extremely well organized.  It is right at the corner of the building where we were staying and runs every two minutes.  A couple of stops and then a transfer and we were right in the heart of downtown.  

The Hop 0n-Hop Off tour starts from the Bellacour square which is right in the heart of the downtown section of Lyon.  The complete circle of Lyon takes 1.5 hours and goes past all of the major sites.  The tour talks about the history of Lyon.  It was originally a major Roman settlement and there are several large Roman sites. After silk worms were smuggled out of China in 552 AD and brought to Lyon, Lyon became the center of silk manufacturing for Europe until the invention of artificial fibers such as nylon and rayon.  The spin off technologies from the silk industries lead to a large pharmacy and chemical industries in Lyon.   The city has had a lot of ups and downs in its long history.  The city has done a great job of melding the old with the modern and today it is a vibrant and exciting place.  Cranes dot the skyline but there are hundreds of sites where the historic buildings are under renovation.  

After we did the hop 0n- hop off tour we wandered out into the mall and ate sandwiches with beer from a vendor.  The Baggett stuffed with sun dried tomato, goat cheese, pickles and lettuce washed down with a beer was great.  The meal also came with a huge fig square.   It was great eating lunch and watching the people.

After lunch we took a tram tour which was a series of little carts hooked together.  This tour covered some of the same ground as the morning tour but went down a lot more of the extremely narrow and steeper streets that the bus could not access.  It took us deep into the silk workers area of town which in the Middle Ages would have been a pretty grim area.  

It was time to head home so we found the closest metro station and after a quick consult on the big map we were on our way back to the condo.  The metro is very fast clean and modern.  We really need to build more of this sort of infrastructure in our cities.

We arrived back at the condo just in time to enjoy a few beers with cheese and bread on the balcony.  Everyone laughed when I said I wasn’t going home but I was serious.

terry hot biker