Lyon, Part 1

Today was unbelievable.  By some stroke of great fortune, Fernando and I met a very nice old man named Robert at a restaurant here in Lyon.  We were sitting next to him in a local bouchon (the Lyonnais term for a restuarant) and we started talking, first in French, and then in English (so Fernando could understand too!).  He was a well-traveled, native Lyonnais looking for something fun and relaxing to do on a Saturday afternoon, so he told us he would take us around town.  Indeed, he took us to all the greatest places to visit in Lyon, and we had some great conversations.  In the afternoon, Fernando and I wanted to buy him a drink, but instead he bought drinks for us!  Both of us are still in shock over how nice Monsieur Robert was, how lucky we were to run into him, and what an excellent day we had in beautiful Lyon.

Anyway, I have enough to share from today to fill up about three posts, so let's start from the beginning.  I promised pictures of our "hostel," so here they are.  As you can see, it is much nicer than anything we expected, especially for the very low price.  The hotel was also situated nicely - a very quick walk to the metro station.

Speaking of the metro system, Lyon definitely has the most efficient metro system I have seen.  There are four metro (subway) lines, four tram lines, and dozens of bus lines.  The subway and trams are completely automated, and don't even have drivers!  The buses run largely on electric power from wires hanging above, and the bus stations have digital displays that tell when the next bus is coming.

The metro is very modern, and the stations and cars are all kept pristine.

The Lyonnais are good about paying for the metro.  On the buses, entry is only allowed on the front door, so no one can get in without paying.  On the trams where all the doors open, they can tell if someone doesn't pay... when that happens, there is a beeping noise and a flashing yellow light, and the tram doesn't leave.  The people here are very polite and orderly about getting on the metro, which is a cultural difference between Lyon and Turin, where basically everyone gets on the tram without paying and revenue comes from fining those they catch without tickets.

Speaking of politeness, the people here are extremely polite, even though our knowledge of French is limited.  Not a single person here addressed me as tu, which is the familiar form of "you."  Instead, everyone always used vous, which is the polite form.  This, too, is different from Italy, where the people are more casual and use tu when talking to younger people (or even older people!).

Fernando and I started off our day with some sightseeing, but I will save those sights for the subsequent posts.  Instead, I will skip straight to lunch.  Downtown, there are endless amounts of restaurants, and there are even streets like this that are entirely comprised of restaurants.

After all, Lyon is considered the gastronomical capital of France.  We stopped for lunch at a local bouchon and had a meal from the menu lyonnais, which consisted of two entrees and a dessert.

For our first entree, Fernando and I both had a salade lyonnaise, which was a salad topped with the tastiest pig ears I have ever tried.

For our second entree, I had saucisson, which means sausage, but is a Lyonnaise specialty.  Fernando had andouillete, which is a sausage made from chopped tripe.  Both were impressively good.  We ended our lunch with a gâteau lyonnais, which was a rich cake with apples and pralines.  I also tried a coffee, whose strength was between the American-style drip coffee and the Italian-style caffè espresso.

Some things that M. Robert told us about eating in France:

• The French always eat bread with their meals, much like the Chinese always eat rice.
• The French always drink wine with their meals.  They don't have soda with their meals because it is too sweet.  Also, if you order just water, people think you are poor (which is interesting because in Italy, most people just have water with their meals).

Fernando and I had ordered Cokes with our meals, which must have immediately made us identifiable as Americans.  We were later able to try some of the local wine, though.  Over here, you can get some of the local wine in a pot, which is a 46 cl (15.55 fl oz) bottle filled from a cask.  Or if you're alone, you would instead want either a fillette, which has 28 cl (9.47 fl oz), or a verre (glass), which is probably around 4 fl oz, a little smaller than the standard wine glass in America.

More to come tomorrow, and merci beaucoup M. Robert!