Kyle Hepp

July 4, 2011

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I am getting sad already that we’re coming to the last of the Lyon pictures. It’s such a beautiful city that I could look at photos of it all day long. I think I have enough for one more post and then c’este fini. For those of you who don’t have as strong a grasp on the language of romance the way I do, I’m pretty sure that means it’s over Hey, you have to give me credit for trying!

So when Seba and I first arrived to Lyon we were super duper exhausted. We’d flown out of London Stansted on the super cheap-o airlines Easy Jet, which meant just to get to the airport we had to take a taxi to catch a train and then take the train about 40 minutes to the airport. Our alarm was set for the buttcrack of dawn (that’s 8am for me, I’m a nightowl for sure) and still we made it to our flight just in the nick of time. In case you’re curious, Easy-Jet and Ryan Air and many more airlines in Europe are budget airlines. The catch is that they usually fly into small airports outside the major cities so you have to travel quite far to get to them. But for the price, it’s worth it to me. You can find 1 Euro per ticket sales, and sure, by the time you’ve paid for the right to check one bag plus taxes, you’re up to 25 Euros — but that’s still way cheaper than what you’d spend flying with a regular carrier.

To quite honest, when we went to Europe in 2009, we flew to I think 6 different countries with Ryan Air and never once had a problem. Same thing with our flights to Lyon on Easy Jet. You travel in seats that don’t recline and don’t even get free water. But we were always on time and our luggage always made it to our destination just fine — which is more than I can say for American Airlines, British Airways or LanChile, the carriers outside Europe that we fly with most. I would never take a budget airline for a flight longer than 2 hours, 3 hours tops, but for the short hauls, the money saved is worth it to me.

Anyways, so that’s why we were up so early to make it to Lyon by mid afternoon.

When we arrived, we checked in at the hotel and decided that we wouldn’t take a nap, so as not to set in a bad pattern of sleeping habits, which we had already been fighting the week before because of jet-lag. To keep ourselves awake, we chose to go out and wander the city. One of the first things we ran into was an open air market. Sadly, we had decided to leave our cameras in the hotel safe because I was so sleepy I didn’t even want to think about carrying anything around. But in my wonderful French, I asked if the market would be open the next day. Nope, said the lettuce man, but it would be open on Sunday. So Sunday after the beautiful wedding we shot in the French countryside outside Lyon, we got up and packed our gear to go check it out….and got there right as everything was closing down. Ah, we’re such horrible tourists. But I did manage to take a few pictures before everything was all put away.

Here was where we were leaving our amazing hotel.

We decided to take a picture of ourselves with the biggest amethyst geode I have ever seen. That’s my birthstone, by the way.

Like I said, most beautiful city in the world.

Virginie explained to me that the city has two rivers — the Rhône and the Saône. One is female and one is male. I believe she said that the Saône was the girl. Anyways, the woman river is feisty and her waters are always moving quicker and are always choppier. So I think this picture must be of the man river.

Now to the market we go.

It seems so cool to me to see things written in French — like it’s not really a language at all, just pretty gibberish.

Fromage. Fromage is my worst nightmare. Everybody who knows me knows I hate cheese with the passion of a thousand fiery suns. Everything about it grosses me out (excepting Parmesan, don’t know why but I like that one). These cheese booths at the market smelled from about a mile away. I could barely even bring myself to come close enough to take a picture!

Even poulet, the word for chicken, sounds so romantic in French.

Fromage lovers everywhere.

These are some kind of sausages.

When I took this picture the lady SCREAMED at me. I mean like a shriek that made everybody stop and stare. And then she proceeded to chew me out in French. I knew she was telling me not to take a picture without asking permission first but I just said “Je ne comprends pas,” and walked away. That made her even angrier and louder. Oh, and I was also going to buy a macaroon from her, but not after that. Ha! Take that, mean French lady! I didn’t even want to post this picture, but I had to for my friend Heather, Queen of all Macaroons.

I was really upset that the lady yelled at me. I had started out asking all the vendors for permission to take a picture, just by gesturing at my camera and nodding my head with a question in my expression. They all said, “Of course! Oui!” After about the 7th vendor who said yes, I just kind of figured, well, it’s an open air market, people probably take pictures here all the time, I stopped asking.

Was I wrong? Should I have kept asking these people if I could take pictures of their merchandise? Either way, it doesn’t change the fact that she did not have to scream at me. And in fact, had she asked me politely to not take a picture I would’ve put my camera away and bought a macaroon as planned. But I still wonder if I was in the wrong or not. What do you think?

After going to the market, we decide to eat lunch at a restaurant that’s typical in Lyon. They’re called a Bouchon Lyonnaisse and they’re everywhere. I went on trip advisor to read up on which might be the best, but in the end, after reading enough descriptions of the food to know that I probably wouldn’t be crazy about it no matter where we went, I decided it didn’t really matter if we went to the most top rated one in the whole city and that we could just go wherever we happened to find one. Like I said, they’re all over, so it didn’t take us long to find one that fit our criteria — full of French people, not tourists. And after a short five minute wait, available outdoor seating. The menu wasn’t in English and our waitress didn’t speak much English, so all we knew about what we were ordering is that I was ordering some kind of salad, and Seba was ordering some kind of sausage and potatoes.

My salad turned out to be less salad and more bacon than anything else. It was greens with bacon, croutons, some kind of vinaigrette dressing, and a poached egg on top. That’s called a poached egg, right? The only kind of egg I eat is scrambled so I’m not super familiar with the different types). It was good but…and I never thought the day would come that anyone would hear these words would come out of my mouth, blasphemy!…there was too much bacon. I couldn’t eat it all!

What Seba ordered ended up to be sort of like a German sausage with mashed potatoes. I didn’t try it but he said it was good. Actually, he just looked over at this blog post as I’m writing it and said he wants to go back to Lyon and eat that meal again, that’s how much he liked it.

For dessert, the creme brulée for Seba! It’s his favorite dessert anywhere in the world and obviously it’s all the better in France! I’m pretty sure this is also the largest creme brulée he’d ever eaten. He could barely finish it.

And my dessert? Champagne. Duh. Also French. Also my favorite dessert anywhere in the world.

Then we wandered around just a little more before going back to the hotel to work on photos!

I think you guys have already seen about a million pictures of the city by the river, but I can’t help it. It’s just so pretty. Straight out of a fairytale, if it weren’t for the giant crane. And if that were a castle instead of a church.