Lyon and the Start of Our French Adventures

Rhônexpress  © Tim Douet 

After months of anticipation for our 3-week journey in France, my friend, Tracy from Kalamazoo, finally arrived at Lyon's Gare Part-Dieu (train station) on the Rhône Express. We had been planning this trip since the previous summer which would include Lyon, Le Puy, and the south of France.

We walked to our AirBNB apartment on Chaponnay, the same street I lived on two years ago when I was taking French classes. I knew the neighborhood, the transportation system, and several key points of the city so I acted as tour guide. The only glitch in our arrangements was parking the car. Every morning on my way back from the boulangerie to pick up a fresh baguette for breakfast, I fed the meter.

 
Machines regulate parking and you must be sure you account for your time. Evenings are free from 7 p.m. until 9 a.m. the next day. We were fortunate to park across the street from our AirBNB, however, parking cost about 35 euros a day. Had it not been for the train strike, we would not have used the car in Lyon.






Of course, the first stop in Lyon is the old city or Vieux Lyon, as it is called. Old Lyon has a variety of restaurants, shops--and St. John the Baptist Cathedral, the seat of the Archbishop of Lyon.

 




Groundbreaking took place in 1180 on the ruins of a 6th century church (the half circle arch).









 


During the French Revolution, churches were targets for destruction. Many of the statues, for example, lost their heads. Some churches became grainaries since their large spaces provided a warehouse-like function.

Inside the cathedral is the Astronomical Clock (to the left of the altar). The 9-metre 14th century clock is an astrolabe, which indicates the date and position of the moon, sun, and earth, as well as the stars. The first documentary evidence of an astronomical clock in the cathedral dates from 1383 but it was destroyed in 1562. In 1661 it was reconstructed by Guillaume Nourrisson. During the French Revolution (1789-99), all royal insignia was removed. The last restoration in 1954 reset the clock's perpetual calendar to 66 years. The clock has been inactive since 2013 but is currently under repair.

When the clock is running, it is quite an animated sight to see as this description illustrates:

The clock's central tower octagon supports several automated figures. After the angel on the left turns the hourglass, an angel on the right keeps the time for the three angels who strike bells to sound the hymn of Saint Jean-Baptiste. The Virgin Mary kneels in a chapel, and turns to the Angel Gabriel as he opens the chapel door, while a dove descends, representing the Holy Spirit. A Swiss Guard rotates around the dome. Movement stops at the sounding of the hour. 

For more on Old Lyon, see Kostas and the Yummy World, a very good travel blog.

We took the funicular up to Fourvière, which was once the site of the Roman forum of Trajan in Lyon or Lugdunum, as the city was called. Gaul (the future France) was conquered for the Romans by Julius Caesar between 58 and 53 BC and Lugdunum was subsequently founded in 43 BC by Lucius Munatius Plancus. Within 50 years the city increased greatly in size and it became Rome's administrative center of Gaul and Germany and the western half of the Roman Empire for centuries. Between 69–192 A.D. the city's population may have numbered 50,000 to 100,000, and possibly up to 200,000 inhabitants. For a portrait of life in Lugdunum, the Gallo-Roman Museum is just down the street from the funicular and it has one of the best preserved collections of Roman art anywhere. Next to the museum is an amphitheatre. These days, summer concerts are held there.












Archeological evidence shows that Lugdunum goes back to the neolithic era. It later became a Gallic settlement with continuous occupation from the 4th century BC. The people there traded with Campania for ceramics and wine, and the use of some Italic-style home furnishings before the Roman conquest.

Fourvière was dedicated to the Virgin Mary, to whom is attributed the salvation of the city of Lyon from the bubonic plague that swept Europe in 1643. Each year on  December 8, the day of the Immaculate Conception, the city of Lyon thanks the Virgin for saving it by lighting candles throughout the city in what is called the Fête des Lumières or the Festival of Lights. The Virgin is also credited with saving the city a number of other times, such as from a cholera epidemic in 1832. 

The Notre Dame Basilica now occupies the top of the Fourvière hill. The church that "looks like an upside down elephant" because of its four towers was built between 1872 and 1884 in thanksgiving for victory in the Prussian War in 1879. The basilica was financed with private funds. Today, it offers guided tours and contains a Museum of Sacred Art. Two million people annually visit the basilica.

 
The basilica interior

Confluence silhouette

We went to the very end point of the Confluence where the Rhône and Saône Rivers meet.
The Rhône, one of France's five great rivers, starts in the Swiss Alps and runs south 813 km (505 miles) to the Mediterranean Sea. In Arles, the Rhône splits into two branches and forms a delta, which constitutes the Camargue region of Provence. The Saône River, a tributary of the Rhône, starts in northeastern France and converges at the Confluence in Lyon. The Saône runs 473 km (294 miles).

The Museum of the Confluence (background) is a modern building based on deconstructivist architectural design. It is built in a newly-developed area of Lyon that was formerly industrial. The design of the building is said to resemble a floating crystal cloud of stainless steel and glass.

Deconstructivism, first appeared in the 1980s and illustrates the fragmentation of a constructed building characterized by an absence of harmony, continuity, or symmetry. Instead, the finished visual appearance is characterized by unpredictability and controlled chaos. The museum certainly illustrates the point, however, it does have a lovely design. Really!

Silk was the major industry in Lyon. It was centered in Croix Rousse up on the city's other hill that  overlooks the Rhône River. The L'Atelier de Soierie on the Place des Terreaux near the center of town specializes in silk screening. Here are some beautiful and colorful handmade scarves. The shop also provides visitors with demonstrations of its silk screening process. 


Near the Place des Terreaux is Ikon, a chocolate fondue shop that can bring anyone to a state of ecstacy and utter decadence. We tried the fruit plate, which is really designed for a group of four people. After we finished our gouté (snack), we were quite overwhelmed by the chocolate--for days.






 

Lyon is one of the great centers of French cuisine. After over-doing it at the chocolate fondue shop, we resorted to eating our main meal in the afternoon and have salads in the evening. This is a very French thing to do. Lyonaise salad (foreground) is the city's specialty while Tracy had a salmon salad.




 
On one evening, we met Sisters Marie Phillippe and Rose for dinner. These sisters had hosted me twice at their apartment when I was taking French language lessons. They served duck with stewed chestnuts, which was very good. For dessert, they served a Noël busch cake while we brought some yummy pasteries....and a chocolate shoe.
 









 







 
One day we had lunch at a restaurant near the French language school that I had attended in March 2017 and January 2018. Tracy had scrambled eggs and yogurt, and I had a salad and special coffee. We visited the shop that has the best French fries in the world. Unfortunately, we were too full to order some. Better luck next trip. 


 





















 
 The Rhone riverfront continues to be a dynamic and beautiful setting both day and night. Walkways run up and down the river. On Sundays, many families take a walk along the river.


 

Lyon was only the beginning of our time together. Tracy and I would return to Le Puy for a few days and then head south to Avignon and Nice.

On the Road to Avignon

© Robynmac / Getty Images

Just a simple trip to Avignon turned out to be an adventurous nightmare for Tracy, my traveling companion, and me as we began our Christmas vacation in the south of France. It seemed so simple on Google maps: get on N-88 and go southeast to A7 (the auto-route). Instead, I inadvertently went north on N-88 for 30 minutes only to turn around, return to Le Puy, and then go south on N-88. (The French do not indicate the cardinal directions on their road signs; they only give city names.) That extra hour would eventually put us in Avignon at 5:30, which is dark at this time of year and never a good time to try to find a place, especially one in a strange city that didn’t allow cars on the street to the front door of our AirBNB apartment!   

Halfway through the trip south we suddenly found ourselves traveling through the mountains where hairpin turns and 10% descents only multiplied the difficulty of traveling on a two-lane highway that seemed to take four times longer than if we had found the more direct A-7 autoroute.

“You better put the car in low-gear,” advised Tracy, who had once ridden with a man who lost his brakes in the mountains. Coming from the relatively flat state of Michigan, I just never think about mountains and gearshift changes. A couple times I had traveled in the Rockies in low gear, but couldn’t remember how to do it now—especially with a French car. We stopped on a roadside outlet and searched for the car manual. Of course, we couldn’t find anything about shifting to low gear. Then we just surmised that putting the gear on “M” would do the trick since  the car’s automatic gearshift displayed no other option. The problem was the “plus” and “minus” indicators. What did they mean? So I tried the “M” setting and played with the “plus” and “minus.” Lo and behold, the engine seemed to slow down the car on “plus 2,” and I used the brakes much less. The problem now was the sound of a belabored engine. I certainly didn’t want to have engine OR brake issues in these beautiful but sparsely-populated mountains.

Finally, we reached some fairly flat geography that would take us all the way into Avignon. We stopped at a snack bar/fruit market, where I took a much-needed bathroom  break—the standing up kind with a hole in the ground—and washed my hands in cold mountain water without soap. The “petit café” I drank sustained me throughout the rest of the day, which I would surely need once we came into the city to look for our AirBNB apartment. I spoke to the server behind the bar in French, and he seemed to understand me and I him. He said there were no more mountains ahead of us and that he had a nice Christmas holiday, but he quickly escaped this lively conversation to wait on another customer in the fruit market.

You might say we were driving blind on our way to Avignon. We had no detailed map, no GPS, and no street signs to help us find our destination. However, my experience in France has been to look for “Centre Ville” signs, which usually takes me where I want to go. Unfortunately, I confused the “Centre Ville” sign on the auto-route with the “Centre Commerciale” sign where big box stores lined up horrifically next to each other for a couple miles. The French have apparently adopted an urban plan of using the outskirts of their cities as a shopping magnet. I saw this same type of monstrosity in Clermont-Ferrand a month earlier.

the very festive Centre Ville

Once we navigated ourselves out of this commercial mess, by intuition no less, we moved on to the city of Avignon. Then, by the grace of God, we found a sign that finally pointed the way to the “Centre Ville” through the fortified walls of the old city where we would stay. As we entered the city on the day after Christmas, people were everywhere on the streets leisurely strolling and shopping. Security guards barricaded many roads to protect these pedestrians and that made it more difficult to find the road of our apartment. And we thought the month-long train strike would be a problem! Here we were within an inch of our destination, and we had to deal with barricades and one-way streets without a compass. However, our traveler’s luck took us to a woman security guard who took pity on us after we told her (in French) our predicament. She looked up our apartment's address on her GPS and then graciously let us through the barricade. It was at this point that I knew we were going to make it. Intuition and dumb luck were beginning to pay off.

We traveled down the street, but were confused about which way to turn at the intersection. Tracy hopped out of the car to ask someone in the corner pharmacy to guide us, but she couldn’t understand the woman’s French. The woman then exited the pharmacy and pointed out the direction we wanted to go. We followed the woman’s finger but ended up at another barricade. This security guard who had no pity for us told me to turn the car around and go back. We needed another clue to get us closer to our destination. 

Tracy got out of the car and asked a couple people on the street for directions. This trick frequently works because some local person will speak English. When when it didn’t work, we thought to call up Lydia, our AirBNB host, on my cell phone. She responded immediately and like an air traffic controller guiding a jet plane to the right glide path, she talked us toward the apartment. We first had to get to the main road, she said, which turned out to be crowded by cars, traffic lights, and numerous buses that had just pulled out of their depot stop.

"Left and then left again," she said. This maneuver took several minutes, so we let Lydia go since she was in the middle of preparing a dinner for 20 people. Fortunately, we found the streets she had indicated until we came up to a narrow, lifeless street where the underground parking area was supposed to be. Thanks to another man who happened to be walking on the street, we learned we were on the right road; parking was just a little further down the street and around the corner. But panic soon set in again after we entered the structure and wound downward on a spiral ramp that had numerous scrapes on its walls from cars that had previously barely passed through. The parking spaces were numbered. Were these spaces reserved parking or open parking? Another “angel” in the structure assured us the parking was open to anyone. You just can’t afford to make such mistakes in France. They are quick to fine you no questions asked.

We parked the car, took out our suitcases, and rode one floor up on the elevator. As we tried to find the exit, a large group of people came upon us. We asked them for directions to the “sortie.” Not only did they guide us up the next stairway, but one of the men carried my suitcase! The Christmas spirit was alive and well in Avignon on this night.

We called Lydia again to guide us to the apartment where the street was supposed to be right around the corner from the parking structure. “Look for the church,” she said, “and turn right at the first street.” We walked toward what we thought was a church and not only found the train station, but one of the walled city’s towers. We called her back. “Turn the other way,” she said, and voilà, we found the right street: another lonely, dark, and narrow pathway that only allowed pedestrians and featured a landmark, the "Love Shop." We held our breaths and pressed on looking for #18 with a grill for a door. 

After walking up and down the street, we found it. I looked up Lydia’s recently texted instructions. We had to put our hand through the grill and punch out the code to the front door of the apartment building. Once in, we needed another code to open a little box where she kept the apartment key. Ah ha! We got the key and entered the building. Then we climbed two flights of a narrow, spiral staircase and found our beautiful and cozy AirBNB apartment. Quick, who’s first to the bathroom?!?

Avignon: Palace of the Popes

In 1309 political unrest in Rome forced Pope Clement V to move the papal court to a small town in France called Avignon.

Built over the demolished episcopal palace, construction of the papal palace began in 1335 and was completed in less than 20 years. Actually, the palace is the amalgamation of two palaces built by two popes: Benedict XII (1334-42), who built the simple Old Palace to the east and north, and his successor Clement VI (1342-52) who built the more flamboyant New Palace to the south and west. 

The palace became the papal residence and seat of Western Christianity during most of the 14th century. It also represented a change in the general organization of the Church by centralizing services and adapting its operations to new and evolving needs. By 1316, the Curia (Church administration) increased from 200 to 500 priests and bishops, and over 1,000 lay officials.

Avignon Papacy
1309–1378/1437

Flag of the Papal States

Coat of arms of the Avignon Papacy

Six papal conclaves were held in the palace, leading to the elections of Benedict XII in 1334, Clement VI in 1342, Innocent VI in 1352, Urban V in 1362, Gregory XI in 1370 and Anti-pope Benedict XIII in 1394. 

The palace boasts 160,000 square feet of floor space and is the largest and one of the most important Gothic palaces in the world because of its many architectural merits, according to Eugène Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc (1814–79), author of Dictionary of French Architecture from the 11th to the 16th Century. These merits include the thickness and height of its towers, the strength of its crenelated walls, the use of arcs for support on its façades--and its ability to withstand heavy and drawn-out sieges. In truth, the palace looks more like a fortress than a palace with parapets, an aura of impregnability, and ten towers, some of which are more than 164 feet high. The design of the palace reflects the insecure tenor of the times for religious life.

Among the surprising characteristics that distinguish the palace for me were the immensity of the rooms, the appreciation for art, and its colors. To get an idea of what the palace looked like in its day, visitors are given a "histopad," an iPad-like device that not only provides computerized images of various rooms, but historical explanations of their use. Here are photos and explanations of a few of the 25 rooms open to the public through a self-guided tour.


In Consistory Hall the pope convened meetings with cardinals, received sovereigns and ambassadors, held public audiences, and announced new cardinals. A fire in 1413 destroyed the painted decorations in this hall; the  reddish discoloration of the stone indicates the enduring effects of the fire. 


 

This computerized image shows how the room was set up. The pope is seated in the center in the back of the photo.
 

Another computerized image shows what the ceiling might have looked like.

The Treasury was a sealed room with slits for windows and iron bars on them. Silver and gold pieces were kept here as well as ornaments and title deeds. Only the pope, the papal chamberlain, and the treasurer were allowed in the Treasury Room that was continuously guarded. Five clerks and a number of notaries, couriers, and scribes were also part of the team. 




 


Registers of accounts, coins, valuables, and documents were kept in chests like these and placed under paving stones built below the floor. 

Saint Martial Chapel was decorated with some brilliantly-colored frescoes by Matteo Giovannetti and his team in 1344-45. The pope and his assistant used this small chapel on non-feast days and weekdays. Soldiers badly damaged the chapel in the 19th century. Over the centuries, deterioration has left the chapel in fragile condition with much more restoration to come.

The chapel was dedicated to St. Martial who was sent by St. Peter to preach the Gospel in the Limousin region in southcentral France. The fourth Avignon Pope, Clement VI, was born in this region. He symbolically moved the saint's feast day to July 7 and ordered the Divine Office to be used from the readings and prayers of the apostles. In this way, Martial, the "new St. Peter", was deemed to give a certain legitimacy to Avignon as the new capital of Christianity and the French popes.

The Chapel of St. John was used for shorter Masses and reduced audiences. It now displays various artifacts of the palace.

 

Courtyard between the Old and the New Palaces

Cupboard doors

 Frescoes in the Lower Hall with a small remnant of a Crucifixion scene below it.

 The Grand Tinel was a 157.5-foot room used for papal feasts. Banquets were held on main feast days or in celebration of men  promoted to cardinal. A feast generally comprised 5 sittings with four different courses. 

The papal cathedra was placed on a platform on one side topped by a canopy. The pope would eat there alone. Cardinals, prelates and other guests sat on benches along the main walls. Meals were served from the center. The master of the hall, the butler, pantler (bread server), the maître de l'eau (water bearer), and several other servants were there ready to act. The écuyer tranchant (cutting squire) cut the food, which was carefully laid on precious chinaware.
 




The dishes were kept warm in the fireplace (reconstructed).

 An ornate door leading to the Grand Chapel

The Grand Chapel is 66 feet high and covers an area of 8,400 square feet. Art exhibits are held here during the summer.

 

Remnants of a fresco in the Grand Chapel.

 



Statuary is now kept in the North Sacristy.

The palace incorporated cloisters into its design, which was considered new and different for a cathedral building. A cloister is a covered walkway or open arcade running along the walls of a building. It was a device used in monasteries to separate monks from the serfs or workmen who lived and worked outside or around the cloister.

The pope's seal flanked by some cute, chubby angels

Pointed stained glass windows with quadre-foils (4-sides) and octo-foils (8-sides) helped to bring in more light and support for the structures so that ceilings could be raised higher. Towering Gothic cathedrals symbolized humanity reaching toward God.









 



Palm tree columns located in the Lower Treasury as well as the Grand Chapel.

 


The staircase is wide with windows fitted along its slope. It was considered an architectural innovation and believed to be the first staircase in the Italian style in France. It was repaired in 1659.

 

Tiles from one of the rooms. Green and brown ceramic was particularly popular in southern France. 









 Keys to the palace

Some interesting old doors in the palace courtyard of no particular significance.

The massive walls assert the power and importance of the palace. One tends to feel puny next to them,which was the point.


The entrance to the palace attracted a
street musician who sang and played popular music to entertain the crowds. 

The facade of the palace is nearly 200 feet long with machicolations (boxes for throwing stones or boiling water or oil on the unsuspecting below), buttresses, and a parapet halfway up the building. Inside the palace beyond the entrance were two guardrooms. The palace resembles a fortress but was an architectural style for churches and monasteries during the late Middle Ages.

The area in front of the palace, called the Place du Palais (palace square), had houses, gardens, orchards and vegetable patches during the 14th century.  

Seven "official" popes and two "anti-popes" reigned in Avignon. Few of these popes were known for their holiness and instead for their extravagance. Clement V died of eating powdered emeralds, which were supposed to cure indigestion. Clement VI believed in luxury as the best way to honor God. In 1367, Pope Urban V tried to move the Curia back to Rome because because the Papal States in Italy were at peace, he wanted to reunite the Latin and Orthodox Christians, and he (and his successor Gregory XI) believed the seat of the papacy should be near the tomb of St. Peter. It wasn't until 1377, however, that the papacy permanently returned to Rome. 

The palace remains a popular tourist attraction with over 650,000 tourists visits to this UNESCO World Heritage Site each year. As an historical and architectural landmark it also houses a large convention center, the archives of the Department of Vaucluse, and a research center on the papacy of Avignon. It also regularly serves as an exhibition center for art works and host of the Festival d'Avignon held every year in July.