Determined to make up for the killer jetlag of yesterday, I set off early from the hostel, walking towards Quai St. Antoine for the morning market. I didn't buy anything, although the vegetables were calling my name. From the market, I walked on towards Place des Terreaux, one of the important squares in the city that was pointed out to me by the lady I met yesterday on the hill. The square has a statue in it made by Frédéric Bartholdi, the same person who made the Statue of Liberty. Everything I had read and heard about the place seemed so impressive, and the actual statue was a bit.. ridiculous. I imagine this is how the statue came to be.
“I say this square looks empty! We should call upon our dear friend Bartholdi to fill it with something RIDICULOUS. Especially after his success with the Statue of Liberty. We also would like a national symbol in our square!”
“I quite agree my dear sir! But whatever should this national symbol be?”
“A woman riding four horses who are thrashing wildly in all directions!”
"Splendid!"
Anyways.
I was much more impressed by the Musem of Fine Art. It was full of statues from the past 2 millenia as well as Egyptian, Roman, Greek, and early Christian artifacts. I haven't seen that many before, and even though I'm sure other places have much more extensive collections, it was perfect for me. They even had a preserved mummy head and hand.
After that, I went on to the Museum of Contemporary Art, which only has one exhibit at a time. The current exhibit is called “Indian Highway IV”, and is made of photographs, instillations, videos, and sculptures made by Indian artists. My favourite was an instillation done by the Raqs Media Collective. They lined clocks along the walls of a room that each had a different city named beneath it. But instead of numbers, there were descriptions written on the clock face, and each city was 'set' to a different word. The possibilities were epiphany, anxiety, duty, guilt, indifference, awe, fatigue, nostalgia, ecstasy, fear, panic, and remorse. It was really evocative.
After the museums, I went to Parc de la Tete D'Or to eat lunch. The park is made of 114 hectares of land, and I sat underneath a shady tree to eat my lunch and read a book. I only read a few chapters though, since I was itching to explore more of the area.
Cities around the world are really starting to pick up a cheap bike rental service. Bike pod stations are set up all over a city, and users can use the bikes for one euro for an hour. If they return the bicycles to another pod within the hour, they can take another bike and continue to use the system all day. Basically, so long as you are willing to check in every hour, you can rent a bike for a euro a day. I grabbed a bike outside of Parc de la Tete D'Or, and went for a loop around the park to see if there was anything I wanted to come back and explore on foot. Short answer: EVERYTHING.
The park has a 16 hectare lake, a rose garden on one side, and huge botanical gardens with every kind of temperate zone imaginable on the other. In the middle of the park, deer were wandering around with their white spotted babies grazing beside them. I was shocked until I realized that like the gardens, the zoo in the middle of the park is free. I saw lions and monkeys and giraffes and elephants (oh my!) as I raced by on my bike.
Dark clouds rolled in and it started to thunder, but it didn't rain. The park lies just on the edge of the Rhone, so I connected to that and started riding down to where the Rhone and Saone connect in the southern park of Lyon. Much like the park, the wide river bank area was full of people. Fellow bikers, joggers, walkers, roller bladers, skateboarders, children playing, people eating at cafes, and my personal favourite: men practicing in a designated Parcours Park.
As I rode my bike back to the hostel, I officially added Lyon to the ever growing list of cities I would like to live in. At this rate, I will need to live for at least 200 years.
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