The opera house in Lyon, France.

Taking shots at night is extremely difficult without a tripod, particularly in open spaces where there are no good places to lean or momentarily place your camera.

A lot of my night shots are hence taken with a lot higher ISO, which introduces a lot of grain. I’ve come to terms with this nowadays.

I didn’t know what this building was at the time we saw it — it was already closed for the evening so we never went in. The arches remind me of the GPO in Melbourne, though the rest of the building is obviously not the same.

At least I think it is La Saone, it’s hard to tell just from Google Maps.

Lyon is around two thirds from the top of France (with Paris being one third from the top), so a great place to stop. It’s famous for being a centre of great food as well as (and I only just found this on Wikipedia now) being the home of Interpol.

The three French cities we visited are, ironically, the three largest. Our stay in Lyon was short, but it was quite a lovely place.

Day Thirty-Three
Lyon
9 September 2007 22:07

Getting up early is not one of my strong suits, but we got up, showered, had breakfast and checked out of our Swiss hotel by 7:30.

We boarded an 8:04 train after wrestling with another set of language difficulties and having to book an overnight train on a day we didn’t ant to (it was fully booked on the day of choice).

The train to Geneva took a couple of hours and I was able to pass time by photographing the heavy fog surrounding us and blocking the view of the mountains and forests.

After a short wait where we couldn’t bu and food as we had no Francs left we hopped on our train to Lyon.  Since a guy the other day hadn’t stamped our Eurail Pass properly we changed a 07 to a 09 and got a free day out of it.

Shortly after a checking in and marvelling that our room was on the sixth floor … above a petrol station we caught a metro to the “old town” of Lyon.  The second Metro train had no driver at the front or back and you could sit right at the front with an incredible view of the underground tunnels and approaching stations.

The Metro station put us right in the middle of market with nice things we couldn’t afford.  We headed down a street laden with restaurants, our stomachs lead the way into an Indian place where we had a three course meal for 16€ each.  It’s been so long since we’ve had Indian we both devoured the lot in no time at all.

Weighed down with food we turned a corner and saw a flight of steps with tourists heading up and down.  So we ascended.  As I rounded a corner the steps continued even higher.  At the top were more steps, more ramps, more steps still.  Finally, we reached the top and the view over the city next to a large white basilica was magnificent.

Back down the long hill and at our hotel we learned that an ancient Roman amphitheater I wanted to visit was back at the top of hill.

The amphitheater dates to 15BC, it used to seat 11,000 people and a 20m wall behind the stage.  It’s still used today but only for a few thousand people.  There is a smaller theatre that was used for music but today a man, woman in an ugly wedding dress and a toilet were being photographed.

We wandered through the city and saw a large plastic tree covered in a flowers, ate some Häagen-Dazs, saw a carousel, a palace, statues and more.

Lyon (and Marseille tomorrow) are a detour from our original plan but that’s the reason our plans have remained open.

Hopefully we’ll be able to catch a TGV fast train tomorrow which ought to be fun.