Originally posted on July 18, 2012 by Canicus

Lyon

Today is effectively the last day of the Grand Tour this year. I’ve managed Venice, Naples, Herculaneum, Pompeii, Stabiae, Paestum, Rome, Ostia and Lyon in the three weeks since leaving Dallas. Today is sort of a transition in time of some 1,500 years from ancient Rome to the modern world.

Lyon was a Gallic dudum before Caesar’s Gallic Wars began. It retained its Gallic name of Lugdunum (Dunum of Lug, a Gallic god) even when it became a part of the Roman empire and, for all intents and purposes, a Roman city. I’m not quite sure how linguistically one gets from Lugdunum to Lyon, though I suppose over centuries of slurred speech (and maybe lots of Gallic beer, Roman wine and eventually the French) one can get from one to the other. Lyon does make a thing about lions though. They are somewhat symbolic for the city.

Much of Lyon is a very modern city, although there are sections that retain not only the Roman but the medieval, renaissance and later characteristics. What it does not seem to be is a tourist city. I decided to visit the Tourist Center in the Place Bellecour, which the hotel literature indicates is where the tourist action is. There is a tourist center run by the transit authority. You can book tours of the city and region there. But there is none of that highly competitive on/off sightseeing bus bit you see in Rome or Paris. Nor are there the legions of hawkers selling all sorts of stuff on the streets as is the case in Venice, Naples and Rome. There is a lot of high class shopping around the Place Bellecour and a lot of sidewalk restaurants. I did eat at one, but decided not to hang around for a couple of hours for the next tour bus.

Tomorrow I pack for an afternoon, non-stop this time, to Rome. Online booking seems a bit strange. The train booking I took from Rome to Venice had a transfer at Bologne; the train booking from Venice to Naples was direct to Rome but with a transfer at Rome. I had originally planned on doing the train from Rome to Lyon, the idea being that on the return I could do a night train that would eliminate a night in a hotel. But that turned out to involve a three country rail pass (Italy, Switzerland and France) and a number of transfers. So I ended up booking a flight and a night at a Leonardo airport. The fight to Lyon involved a transfer at Milan; but the return in direct and non-stop. Go figure. A taxi driver here told me I should have flown to Paris, and then take trains to Venice, Naples, Rome, Lyon and back to Paris to fly home. He probably is right.

Canicus Modius