Lyon, France

I got into Lyon, visited the tourist office and found the hostel with the help of a man on the street, the bus-driver, and a random worker at the metro station who told me he would see me soon in Los Angeles. I told him to have a good day. The hostel was a great location. The first picture is the view out of my hostel window. The hostel was located a small hike up on the hill in Vieux Lyon, had granola for breakfast and clean rooms. I met some other Americans there from Washington, WSU, to be exact who graduated last year too. The Spanish expression is the world is a handkerchief, so it’s a small world. I visited the textile museum and the gentleman who sold me my ticket gave me a free ticket to the extra exhibits because I am a textile student. They were really great, one about gloves in the modern world and the other about modern and technological textiles in design and art. The museum gentleman was very kind and kind of cute, he gave me the tickets with a wink and explained to me in French that I could go to the exhibits. I half understood, but the body language helped. I think I enjoyed the exhibits all the much more because someone thought it important enough for me to go to them that he gave me a free ticket. I didn't realize he had given to them for me for free at first because it was all in French, but afterwards I wanted to thank him and he wasn't there. Thank you random French people!

I walked around a lot and enjoyed some shopping. I finally found a striped shirt. It isn’t navy and white, but black and white but still serves as a fabulous stereotypical French souvenir. I met some people at my hostel, rode around on public transport to see the city a bit, visited the House of the “Canuts” which I believe can be translated as silk-workers or silk-weavers. I had a tour of the jacquard loom and a short lecture about the silk-cultivation brought over by priests to Lyon, silk’s first birthplace in Europe, it was illegally imported from the East. The tour was all in French however, so I didn’t even understand anything about the worker’s revolution that I had gone on the tour to find out about. I bought a silk scarf that was actually made in France not in China, is that actually fitting?, and was given a silk cocoon as a souvenir for the tour. I had asked if the tour would be in English, because at the tourist office they had mentioned that it would be. I walked around, and did a lot of window-shopping. I bought some cheese at the market on the street that had mildew growing on it. The hostel receptionist said it was good to eat. The inside was good, but the skin was too strong and not very pleasing. Some “sympa” French girls that I talked to told me it was okay to eat the skin, but wouldn’t taste good. It was just best not too. Lyon in all was a pleasant place to visit and I had a great placed hostel. If anyone ever goes, I would recommend going on a traboules tour, a tour of alleys in-between buildings and in blocks, somewhat non-secretive secret corridors if you didn’t know to look for them. The tourist office had a map with red lines highlighting them, so I went in search of some myself. It was quite fun, but I didn’t find them all. Some of them you just kind of happen to come upon them if you follow the crowds though. I liked the people in Lyon too. It merits a day or two in a site-seeing tour. If you like museums there are plenty to see and they do have a museum-pass with a student discount.

The other photos are of one of the traboules, or alleyways, one of a poster in the Silk-Weavers' House, the higher Basilique in Old Lyon, and the Hotel de Ville. Lovely place with lots of photo opportunities.