I am slightly ashamed to admit that after living for a grand total of 5 years and a little bit in La Republique of Le Coq I had never been to her second city Lyon (or Lyons for the language purists). Not really that shocking when you consider that I live in the first city (Paris) and prefer to go only to weekend in places where I know someone with a top floor terrace apartment like The Body in Firenze or Louis XIV in Evian.
Not unlike Miss Havisham* I am a woman of means doted with a passion for the melodramatic visualisation and characterisation of daily, unordinary, mundane events. Not unlike Miss Havisham I am also given to abusing the hospitality of my friends who live in places far more interesting than mine. However quite unlike Miss Havisham, I do still leave my house and as such, embarked upon the great southern city of Lyon, perched between the Le Rhône et La Saône, and rather significantly the home of the Godfather of French Cuisine Paul Bocusse and rather serendipitously, the ancestral seat of the family of Louis XIV.
A big white church on a hill not in Paris
La Franglaise and I were fortunate enough to have a very good reason to visit and as such I can now say that I have visited, tasted and drunk the health to the home of salty, dry Saucisson, fluorescent red Tarte Praline and fresh Beaujolais Nouveau.
Tarte Praline - take a bag of lollies, a bucket of sour cream, a tart case and a defibrilator....
Dionysius and his younger Roman counterpart Bacchus are indeed the someone’s who watch over me as I roam the great wide yonder upon this earth. How surprised was I really to discover that the one day I happened to be in the capital of the Rhone wine region coincided with the festival celebrating the release of the Beaujolais Nouveau for 2011. Stalls lined up along the streets of Lyon proffering sliced saucisson to accompany a thimble-sized glass of the recently released acidly green tasting red wine.
The festival for the Beaujolais Nouveau
Be sure to review the comments section at the bottom of this page because if I get any of this wrong, Louis will most certainly correct me.
In ancient times, Lyon was the capital of France. The Twin Rivers allow for easy access to the ports in the South and the invading hordes. As such, the rather more land-locked Paris eventually got the job of bossing around the realm of France. The city of Lyon, not quite as inhabited as Paris has managed to perfect that tenuous balance between having everything, and not being so inundated with humanity as to be impossible to live in. The architecture is reminiscent of Paris with it’s Haussmannian symmetry, the streets are laced with restaurants and bars if only the people were a little bit less up their own bums I could seriously imagine myself living there.
Besides being a really very beautiful city, the best thing about Lyon is the food.
Saucisson de Lyon ad infinitum
Australians will know that during her seminal series, French Food Safari, Maeve visited Lyon several times. While not busy fawning over the gallant gallois Guillaume, she found some time to sample the wares at Les Halles de Lyon, an enormous food market bursting forth with charcuterie, a plethora of cheese and the most delicious patisserie. Only in France could the most significant tourist attraction of a significant city be its food market.
Fromage Lego
I was not able to spend more than 36 hours in Lyon and so not much more to talk about than the exceptional food. I will be certain to remedy this as soon as the exigencies of Festivus are done with in mid January.
But as always, Louis to the rescue with his chariot of gold (OK, a SEAT Ibiza), 2 hours in the car and hop, we were in Evian. Louis, trained to five star level in the arts of aristocratic entertaining is always the best host and did his utmost to make us feel at home. Some cheese, some wine and then some cheese and then some more wine before we were off to the baths.
Yep, that's the logo of the Evian Bottle up on that hill
Switzerland is the calmest of countries to be pinned to the terrain of this earth. A Saturday night, at 7pm, it is the only place you could find all the youths of the surrounding area, semi-naked in once place. Not a smoky nightclub, not an underground drug-den, but thermal baths. The place to be for the residents of La Suisse Romande on a Saturday night in winter is gathered together within the safe refuge of a giant swimming pool filled with the warm waters springing forth from the mountains upon high.
What better way to sweat out the lactose and the alcohol than banded together in a giant bowl of hot water?
More to come after the remainder of Festivus to be spent in Sweden, the home of pure clear alcohol and small rooms filled with steam. A recipe for disaster or delight?
Geneva proves that size does matter
*For those of you who don’t know who Miss Havisham is, Google Great Expectations, or even better, get thee to ITV so you can watch the new version with Gillian Anderson (yes Agent Scully) playing the formidable femme fatale
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