Paris may have stinky subways, but they sure have terrific train stations. I wish we had made time to get more of a look around at Gare de Lyon, where we caught our train to Lyon yesterday morning. They told us at the hotel we only needed to be there twenty to thirty minutes before departure, and it didn't occur to us to allow for more time to enjoy the station itself.
Gare de Lyon is spacious and airy, very clean, and very busy but does not feel crowded. There are several shops and cafes all around the main terminal, and Andy said some of the cafes looked really nice, much better than food court stalls or carry-out stands. So next trip, we make time to enjoy the station too.
Linda was absolutely right when she told me the French take their train travel seriously and put a lot of their public money into making it comfortable and easy to use. The Eurostar was nice, but not as nice or easy as train travel within France. I can't get over how easy it all was. We simply got out of our taxi, walked into the station, took a couple minutes to look around and get oriented, and then walked straight to our train and got on. No stairs, no escalators, no security checkpoints, not even a turnstile to pass through.
Andy bought us first-class tickets again, so we were up in one of the front cars of the train. It was a TGV duplex, and we were up on the top deck in the roomiest most comfortable train seats I've ever encountered. You could truly stretch out and take a nice nap in those seats. It seemed like no time at all when we pulled into Lyon two hours later.
And again, it was so easy. We just got off the train, walked through the station out to the street, and found a taxi. The ride to the Hotel Best Western Charlemagne was about a half-hour, and we were all settled into our room with a couple hours to spare before our Road Scholar French Cooking in Lyon tour orientation lecture and welcome dinner.
We're a small group, only sixteen of us, and all Americans. Andy and I are the only Californians. Everyone else is from New York or the Midwest. I am not surprised our group is mostly women. Andy is one of only four men (all husbands of one of the women), and then there is our guide, Emanuel. He's a tall dark Frenchman with Spanish blood, and speaks French, Spanish and English in a rumbling bass that I love listening to but have a hard time understanding. I'll get used to it.
Apart from advising us to always take advantage of any restroom opportunities presented to us during the week's activities "because public restrooms are practically nonexistent here," the most important thing he told us last night was how to do a proper French toast. You raise your wine glass to your partner, he said, "and it's very important to look them in the eyes. Then you say, 'Chee-chee!' and clink your glasses."
"Chee-chee" is what it sounds like, anyway. Andy says it's spelled something like "tschi-tschi." There's no real translation for it, according to Emanuel. We might not have learned what it means, or how to pronounce it or spell it, but we all sure enjoyed practicing it all evening.
It looks like all our cooking lessons are going to be at a cooking school by the name of "L'atelier des Chefs," or "Chefs' Workshop." When we arrived there this morning for our first lesson, we were each given a top-quality chef's bib apron, black, with the cooking school and Road Scholar logos embroidered on front and our first names at the top. Very nice. Andy looks very distinguished in his.
So there we were, all dressed up in our spiffy black chef's aprons, chatting over coffee at the long table, waiting for our cooking lesson. Today we were going to be making appetizers and then eating them for lunch. A school chef appeared at the head of the table, told us to "Do your best," and disappeared.
Well, OK then ... So we went into the kitchen, which was a haze of shiny stainless steel mixed in with pits of dark shadow and shards of bright light. With Andy's help I learned the layout well enough. There are half a dozen work stations (each about as big as the island in my own kitchen), a huge professional eight-burner gas stove, a wall of ovens, a wall of refrigerators and freezers, a large sink and counter for the big clean-up jobs and a few sink-and-faucet stations for smaller jobs and washing hands. Each work station had a different assortment of food items, and apparently we were to create an appetizer out of whatever was at our station.
I had a moment of sheer panic. What in hell am I doing here, there's no way I can handle this, I can't see worth beans, I can't hear worth beans, I haven't got a clue what is where, there's too many people in here and I'll end up stabbing them all with my knife, I don't even know what we're supposed to do, it's time for me to check out of here, good bye and no thank you.
But Andy got right down to business. "OK, here's the onions," he said, taking my hand and putting it on the onions, and then on to the carrots, green apples, a leafy green that he said was "some really dark-looking cabbage," fresh ginger, "and some kind of sausage."
"Chorizo," someone said.
"Yeah, cho-what's-it," Andy agreed.
My brain clicked on, and in my mind I was beginning to caramelize sliced onions with chopped chorizo sausage and thinking about adding julienned cabbage and carrots, and maybe some apple and fresh ginger--
But Andy was pulling me by the hand over to another table loaded with other ingredients, both sweet and savory, including basic working ingredients like eggs, flour, milk, and butter. And a stack of very thin, cooked crepes that we were supposed to use. OK, crepes then, I can fill them and roll them up and cut them into pieces.
"I know what I'm going to do," I told Andy, "I need to get back to the work station." I was happy with the knives -- hefty and solid in the hand, and very, very sharp. I set Andy to cutting the sausage into quarter-inch dice, while I sliced onion. I needed small bowls to put my ingredients in, and began feeling around the work station.
"What do you need?" Andy asked.
"Bowls," I said, "to put all my chopped stuff in."
They appeared, and Andy assured me, "You just tell me whatever you need." I had him slice the cabbage into thin strips, and put them in the same bowl with the carrots I'd julienned. The peeled diced apple went into a third bowl, and when Andy finished peeling and mincing an inch of fresh ginger root, that went on top of the apple.
"Anything else?" Andy asked.
"Can I get some fresh Italian flat-leaf parsley?"
I could. When Andy got the leaves stripped off the stalks ("Do I need to chop them?" "No, the leaves are fine."), I told him I needed to get to the stove with a heavy sauté pan and some olive oil. The pan appeared and so the oil. I drizzled about two teaspoons, no more, of the oil into the pan, got it hot, and threw in the onion and sausage. "Don't you want more oil?" Andy asked.
"No, the fat in the sausage will be enough." I sauteed the onions with the sausage over medium heat until I began to catch that mellow caramel odor, and Andy said they were a golden brown. Then I added the julienned cabbage and carrots and let them cook for about three minutes, then added the apple, ginger and parsley.
I tasted, and decided it needed a bit of crunch. I was thinking along the lines of water chestnuts but Andy found some chopped almonds, and those worked fine. Andy ground some fresh black pepper into it, I sprinkled about two tablespoons of balsamic vinegar into it, and then tossed in a handful of grated parmigiana cheese.
That tasted all right to me: a nice meld of the onion and sausage, the cabbage and carrots were good supporting base flavors, the apple and ginger gave it a tang and some zing, the parsley and balsamic brightened it all up and the parmigiana rounded everything out.
Now we went back to the work station, where Andy helped me spread this filling onto two big crepes and roll them into logs. We cut them into sixteen pieces (one for each class member), set the pieces on a cooking sheet, and drizzled a bit of olive oil over each. "What temperature and how long do you want these in the oven?"
I really didn't know, but I said (as though I knew perfectly well); "Three fifty for ten minutes."
Then I was all done and wondered what to do next. I saw Andy talking to some of our classmates and moved over to his little group. The school chef was there too, and Andy turned to me and said, "They want to know if you want to make a sweet appetizer."
"A sweet one? Do I have time?"
Yes, I had plenty, so Andy took me back over to the table with all the supplies, and we found pralines, toasted hazelnuts and almonds, and shredded coconut. And some really excellent dark chocolate. Hmmm. Maybe a creamy nut filling and add some chocolate. "Is there any mascarpone cheese I can use?"
Yes, there was mascarpone, and I was handed some. I set Andy to work chopping up the nuts and the pralines ("Don't you want any sugar?" "No, the pralines are the sugar."). I was surprised to find a couple of my classmates joining in on the chopping, and we soon had a nice pile to mix into the mascarpone with the coconut. I tasted it, and decided it needed .... Something.
"Can I get some Amaretto? Or some other nut liqueur?" Yes, I could, and a bottle of Amaretto was handed to me. (By this point I wasn't sure I was learning anything but I sure was beginning to like having whatever I asked for appear like magic.). I put in just two capfuls of Amaretto, tasted again, and that was just right.
Now we went back over to the stove to melt the chocolate. I asked for a double-boiler, but the school chef didn't know what I meant. Andy described in his rudimentary French how I wanted to melt the chocolate over hot water ("Melt chocolat sur water chaud?").
"Ah oui, oui!" And the chef brought me a pan full of water to put on the burner, and a flat-bottomed, flared stainless steel bowl to set into it. Perfect. In fact, better than my Farberware double-boiler at home. I added just a touch of cream to the melted chocolate, and we went back to the work station.
I spread the mascarpone mix evenly over two crepes, using my hands. This was a totally tactile operation for me because to me the mascarpone mix was invisible against the crepe, which in turn was invisible against the light working surface. Andy drizzled the chocolate on top, and we rolled up the crepes to make logs again. Andy and one of our classmates cut them into 16 pieces, drizzled a little more chocolate over each, and sprinkled the tops with a few sliced almonds.
It turned out that Andy and I were mistaken in thinking we absolutely had to use the crepes (or almost everyone else ignored that direction). Our class created quite an assortment of appetizers, ranging from beef and salmon tartares to a tossed salad with a Ceasar-type dressing to a shrimp and cheese omelet, simple slices of fruit with cheese and a garnish, even a fresh chutney served on a cracker with cheese.
All the trays of all our creations crowded the big long table and made an ample feast, along with plenty of wine. I tasted everything, and while I liked some things more than others, it was still all good, even the beef and salmon tartares. (And I noticed that not everyone tasted everything.) The beef tartare was surprisingly good, with lots of minced onion and ginger, fresh black pepper, and I think a dash of mustard. The salmon tartare was good, too, chopped with ginger and lemon, with a dollop of tangy cream on top. My personal fave was a pear and Brie tart with pistachios. My little sausage and cabbage rolls turned out well, and my nutty mascarpone rolls weren't bad either. I got a lot of compliments on both of them, and there weren't any leftovers.
If I were to do those again, I'd use wonton wrap or phyllo dough for the cabbage rolls, and I'd put the mascarpone mix into a crust, maybe a dark chocolate crust.
It wasn't quite the cooking lesson any of us expected, but we all did well anyway, and I had a great time in spite of wanting to bolt in panic at the very beginning. There was no way I could have done it without Andy's help, and I told him so. He told me I was the only one in the class who'd made more than one appetizer.
"Really? I guess I acquitted myself well then," I said.
"Mary, everyone was standing around watching you," Andy said. "You did better than just acquit yourself."
We walked off all those appetizers after lunch with a walking tour of Old Lyon. The buildings are all the same gray-white or light beige stone, in the same general architectural style, and mostly the same height too. Emanuel said the uniformity is a result of the early Roman Empire influence. "The saying is," he told us, "'If you've seen one old Roman building, you've seen them all.'"
The interesting part of the tour for me were all the narrow cobblestoned streets with hidden doorways and passageways that opened up into secret courtyards. I also enjoyed spending time at an old cathedral with many stained glass windows (I could only see whitish light but in my mind I was able to add in the colors when someone gave them to me). The cathedral was also full of incredibly beautiful stonework and high aches, statues and paintings. It was nice sitting in there, resting my feet and listening to the choir music while drinking in all I could see.
I wondered about the financial and human resources that went into building that cathedral -- they had to be incredible, indeed must have been astronomical. And this is just one of countless churches and cathedrals all over Europe. It occurred to me that in order to understand how the Catholic Church could spend so much money on cathedrals instead of using the money to improve living conditions for its members, it's necessary to remember that in that era, physical life on Earth was supposed to be hard. The church building was a representation of the glory of God and spiritual life in heaven.
Still, I couldn't help but wonder what kind of lives, what kind of history, we'd have today if the Catholic Church had put a lot more of its wealth into improving the quality of life for its members, rather than into gilded cathedral roofs and stained glass windows.
But then, I thought, that's not really a fair question, because it doesn't account for that ineffable and inestimable value of the art -- the spirit in the art -- to the quality of our lives. Those treasures back then are still incredible treasures today. And in today's world, we're sure not creating beautiful masterpieces for the centuries to come the way they did back then.
A few others in our group shared my cathedral respite, as we decided to sit out the hike up the tallest hill in the city to visit a cathedral up there. I thought about going, because that cathedral supposedly has beautiful mosaics, but my feet are still in bad shape. Our walking tour was only supposed to be a mile or two, but I'm sure it was really three or four, and it was at least another mile for Andy and the others who hiked up the hill. Andy said he thought it was two miles total, up and back.
He said the view from the top of the hill was gorgeous, and that the cathedral up there is even more beautiful than the one I visited. But, he added, considering the hike and what I can realistically see, my decision to skip that part of the tour was a good one.
We were all tired by the time we got back to the hotel via the Lyon metro and tram system. My feet were very unhappy and when I learned that we were all supposed to take the metro again to our dinner, I told Andy we were taking a taxi. Another couple joined us, and even Andy was glad to get off his feet for the rest of the evening.
Tonight's dinner was at L'Est, a restaurant located in what used to be the easternmost railway station in Lyon. The main thing I noticed about the restaurant is that the walls were dark, but the place was well-lit so that the pristine white tablecloths positively glowed. And the white napkins had a little buttonhole in one corner, so that you could attach it to a shirt button for a good cover.
It was like trying to see in the fog with bright lights. Between the glare from the bright white tablecloths and then more glare from all the bright white shirtfronts across the table, I had to keep my sunglasses on. In fact, I just closed my eyes for almost the entire time we were there.
But I had no trouble cleaning my plate. I ordered grilled salmon, which was perfectly done and came with perfectly sautéed melt-in-your-mouth fresh spinach. I don't remember what Andy ordered except that he was not as happy with his meal as I was with mine.
Tomorrow starts early: we all meet in the lobby at 7:30 a.m., and will go with Emanuel and our teaching chef to a professional market to pick out all the ingredients we'll be cooking with later. Andy and I are looking forward to that, even if we'd rather not have to get up so early for it.
Short shots:
Lyon metro and tram:
Lyon's subway system is not as old as the one in Paris, and is much cleaner and more user-friendly. The closest subway station is about 4 blocks from our hotel, and we take it three stops to the L'atelier des Chefs, which is about two blocks from the subway. I notice that when we walk into the entrance of any station, we're hit with a whiff of air freshener, usually a pleasant scent and not overpowering. I suspect that without the air freshener, Lyon's subways would stink as much as Paris' system does. Andy says he's a few homeless people huddled near the entrances of a couple of the stations we used today. But so far, no dog poop.
The tram operates at ground level and is also very user-friendly. It stops at the subway station (different level than the subway trains, of course), and it also stops a couple blocks closer to our hotel than the subway.
Everyone uses the subway and tram systems here, buses too. Emanuel said not many people drive private cars here; it's too hard to find good parking, gas is expensive, and public transit is cheap and very good.
Graffiti:
Andy's been commenting a lot on how much graffiti there is all over Lyon -- in the subways, on professional buildings, just everywhere. That's one thing I'm glad I don't see much.
Gare de Lyon is spacious and airy, very clean, and very busy but does not feel crowded. There are several shops and cafes all around the main terminal, and Andy said some of the cafes looked really nice, much better than food court stalls or carry-out stands. So next trip, we make time to enjoy the station too.
Linda was absolutely right when she told me the French take their train travel seriously and put a lot of their public money into making it comfortable and easy to use. The Eurostar was nice, but not as nice or easy as train travel within France. I can't get over how easy it all was. We simply got out of our taxi, walked into the station, took a couple minutes to look around and get oriented, and then walked straight to our train and got on. No stairs, no escalators, no security checkpoints, not even a turnstile to pass through.
Andy bought us first-class tickets again, so we were up in one of the front cars of the train. It was a TGV duplex, and we were up on the top deck in the roomiest most comfortable train seats I've ever encountered. You could truly stretch out and take a nice nap in those seats. It seemed like no time at all when we pulled into Lyon two hours later.
And again, it was so easy. We just got off the train, walked through the station out to the street, and found a taxi. The ride to the Hotel Best Western Charlemagne was about a half-hour, and we were all settled into our room with a couple hours to spare before our Road Scholar French Cooking in Lyon tour orientation lecture and welcome dinner.
We're a small group, only sixteen of us, and all Americans. Andy and I are the only Californians. Everyone else is from New York or the Midwest. I am not surprised our group is mostly women. Andy is one of only four men (all husbands of one of the women), and then there is our guide, Emanuel. He's a tall dark Frenchman with Spanish blood, and speaks French, Spanish and English in a rumbling bass that I love listening to but have a hard time understanding. I'll get used to it.
Apart from advising us to always take advantage of any restroom opportunities presented to us during the week's activities "because public restrooms are practically nonexistent here," the most important thing he told us last night was how to do a proper French toast. You raise your wine glass to your partner, he said, "and it's very important to look them in the eyes. Then you say, 'Chee-chee!' and clink your glasses."
"Chee-chee" is what it sounds like, anyway. Andy says it's spelled something like "tschi-tschi." There's no real translation for it, according to Emanuel. We might not have learned what it means, or how to pronounce it or spell it, but we all sure enjoyed practicing it all evening.
It looks like all our cooking lessons are going to be at a cooking school by the name of "L'atelier des Chefs," or "Chefs' Workshop." When we arrived there this morning for our first lesson, we were each given a top-quality chef's bib apron, black, with the cooking school and Road Scholar logos embroidered on front and our first names at the top. Very nice. Andy looks very distinguished in his.
So there we were, all dressed up in our spiffy black chef's aprons, chatting over coffee at the long table, waiting for our cooking lesson. Today we were going to be making appetizers and then eating them for lunch. A school chef appeared at the head of the table, told us to "Do your best," and disappeared.
Well, OK then ... So we went into the kitchen, which was a haze of shiny stainless steel mixed in with pits of dark shadow and shards of bright light. With Andy's help I learned the layout well enough. There are half a dozen work stations (each about as big as the island in my own kitchen), a huge professional eight-burner gas stove, a wall of ovens, a wall of refrigerators and freezers, a large sink and counter for the big clean-up jobs and a few sink-and-faucet stations for smaller jobs and washing hands. Each work station had a different assortment of food items, and apparently we were to create an appetizer out of whatever was at our station.
I had a moment of sheer panic. What in hell am I doing here, there's no way I can handle this, I can't see worth beans, I can't hear worth beans, I haven't got a clue what is where, there's too many people in here and I'll end up stabbing them all with my knife, I don't even know what we're supposed to do, it's time for me to check out of here, good bye and no thank you.
But Andy got right down to business. "OK, here's the onions," he said, taking my hand and putting it on the onions, and then on to the carrots, green apples, a leafy green that he said was "some really dark-looking cabbage," fresh ginger, "and some kind of sausage."
"Chorizo," someone said.
"Yeah, cho-what's-it," Andy agreed.
My brain clicked on, and in my mind I was beginning to caramelize sliced onions with chopped chorizo sausage and thinking about adding julienned cabbage and carrots, and maybe some apple and fresh ginger--
But Andy was pulling me by the hand over to another table loaded with other ingredients, both sweet and savory, including basic working ingredients like eggs, flour, milk, and butter. And a stack of very thin, cooked crepes that we were supposed to use. OK, crepes then, I can fill them and roll them up and cut them into pieces.
"I know what I'm going to do," I told Andy, "I need to get back to the work station." I was happy with the knives -- hefty and solid in the hand, and very, very sharp. I set Andy to cutting the sausage into quarter-inch dice, while I sliced onion. I needed small bowls to put my ingredients in, and began feeling around the work station.
"What do you need?" Andy asked.
"Bowls," I said, "to put all my chopped stuff in."
They appeared, and Andy assured me, "You just tell me whatever you need." I had him slice the cabbage into thin strips, and put them in the same bowl with the carrots I'd julienned. The peeled diced apple went into a third bowl, and when Andy finished peeling and mincing an inch of fresh ginger root, that went on top of the apple.
"Anything else?" Andy asked.
"Can I get some fresh Italian flat-leaf parsley?"
I could. When Andy got the leaves stripped off the stalks ("Do I need to chop them?" "No, the leaves are fine."), I told him I needed to get to the stove with a heavy sauté pan and some olive oil. The pan appeared and so the oil. I drizzled about two teaspoons, no more, of the oil into the pan, got it hot, and threw in the onion and sausage. "Don't you want more oil?" Andy asked.
"No, the fat in the sausage will be enough." I sauteed the onions with the sausage over medium heat until I began to catch that mellow caramel odor, and Andy said they were a golden brown. Then I added the julienned cabbage and carrots and let them cook for about three minutes, then added the apple, ginger and parsley.
I tasted, and decided it needed a bit of crunch. I was thinking along the lines of water chestnuts but Andy found some chopped almonds, and those worked fine. Andy ground some fresh black pepper into it, I sprinkled about two tablespoons of balsamic vinegar into it, and then tossed in a handful of grated parmigiana cheese.
That tasted all right to me: a nice meld of the onion and sausage, the cabbage and carrots were good supporting base flavors, the apple and ginger gave it a tang and some zing, the parsley and balsamic brightened it all up and the parmigiana rounded everything out.
Now we went back to the work station, where Andy helped me spread this filling onto two big crepes and roll them into logs. We cut them into sixteen pieces (one for each class member), set the pieces on a cooking sheet, and drizzled a bit of olive oil over each. "What temperature and how long do you want these in the oven?"
I really didn't know, but I said (as though I knew perfectly well); "Three fifty for ten minutes."
Then I was all done and wondered what to do next. I saw Andy talking to some of our classmates and moved over to his little group. The school chef was there too, and Andy turned to me and said, "They want to know if you want to make a sweet appetizer."
"A sweet one? Do I have time?"
Yes, I had plenty, so Andy took me back over to the table with all the supplies, and we found pralines, toasted hazelnuts and almonds, and shredded coconut. And some really excellent dark chocolate. Hmmm. Maybe a creamy nut filling and add some chocolate. "Is there any mascarpone cheese I can use?"
Yes, there was mascarpone, and I was handed some. I set Andy to work chopping up the nuts and the pralines ("Don't you want any sugar?" "No, the pralines are the sugar."). I was surprised to find a couple of my classmates joining in on the chopping, and we soon had a nice pile to mix into the mascarpone with the coconut. I tasted it, and decided it needed .... Something.
"Can I get some Amaretto? Or some other nut liqueur?" Yes, I could, and a bottle of Amaretto was handed to me. (By this point I wasn't sure I was learning anything but I sure was beginning to like having whatever I asked for appear like magic.). I put in just two capfuls of Amaretto, tasted again, and that was just right.
Now we went back over to the stove to melt the chocolate. I asked for a double-boiler, but the school chef didn't know what I meant. Andy described in his rudimentary French how I wanted to melt the chocolate over hot water ("Melt chocolat sur water chaud?").
"Ah oui, oui!" And the chef brought me a pan full of water to put on the burner, and a flat-bottomed, flared stainless steel bowl to set into it. Perfect. In fact, better than my Farberware double-boiler at home. I added just a touch of cream to the melted chocolate, and we went back to the work station.
I spread the mascarpone mix evenly over two crepes, using my hands. This was a totally tactile operation for me because to me the mascarpone mix was invisible against the crepe, which in turn was invisible against the light working surface. Andy drizzled the chocolate on top, and we rolled up the crepes to make logs again. Andy and one of our classmates cut them into 16 pieces, drizzled a little more chocolate over each, and sprinkled the tops with a few sliced almonds.
It turned out that Andy and I were mistaken in thinking we absolutely had to use the crepes (or almost everyone else ignored that direction). Our class created quite an assortment of appetizers, ranging from beef and salmon tartares to a tossed salad with a Ceasar-type dressing to a shrimp and cheese omelet, simple slices of fruit with cheese and a garnish, even a fresh chutney served on a cracker with cheese.
All the trays of all our creations crowded the big long table and made an ample feast, along with plenty of wine. I tasted everything, and while I liked some things more than others, it was still all good, even the beef and salmon tartares. (And I noticed that not everyone tasted everything.) The beef tartare was surprisingly good, with lots of minced onion and ginger, fresh black pepper, and I think a dash of mustard. The salmon tartare was good, too, chopped with ginger and lemon, with a dollop of tangy cream on top. My personal fave was a pear and Brie tart with pistachios. My little sausage and cabbage rolls turned out well, and my nutty mascarpone rolls weren't bad either. I got a lot of compliments on both of them, and there weren't any leftovers.
If I were to do those again, I'd use wonton wrap or phyllo dough for the cabbage rolls, and I'd put the mascarpone mix into a crust, maybe a dark chocolate crust.
It wasn't quite the cooking lesson any of us expected, but we all did well anyway, and I had a great time in spite of wanting to bolt in panic at the very beginning. There was no way I could have done it without Andy's help, and I told him so. He told me I was the only one in the class who'd made more than one appetizer.
"Really? I guess I acquitted myself well then," I said.
"Mary, everyone was standing around watching you," Andy said. "You did better than just acquit yourself."
We walked off all those appetizers after lunch with a walking tour of Old Lyon. The buildings are all the same gray-white or light beige stone, in the same general architectural style, and mostly the same height too. Emanuel said the uniformity is a result of the early Roman Empire influence. "The saying is," he told us, "'If you've seen one old Roman building, you've seen them all.'"
The interesting part of the tour for me were all the narrow cobblestoned streets with hidden doorways and passageways that opened up into secret courtyards. I also enjoyed spending time at an old cathedral with many stained glass windows (I could only see whitish light but in my mind I was able to add in the colors when someone gave them to me). The cathedral was also full of incredibly beautiful stonework and high aches, statues and paintings. It was nice sitting in there, resting my feet and listening to the choir music while drinking in all I could see.
I wondered about the financial and human resources that went into building that cathedral -- they had to be incredible, indeed must have been astronomical. And this is just one of countless churches and cathedrals all over Europe. It occurred to me that in order to understand how the Catholic Church could spend so much money on cathedrals instead of using the money to improve living conditions for its members, it's necessary to remember that in that era, physical life on Earth was supposed to be hard. The church building was a representation of the glory of God and spiritual life in heaven.
Still, I couldn't help but wonder what kind of lives, what kind of history, we'd have today if the Catholic Church had put a lot more of its wealth into improving the quality of life for its members, rather than into gilded cathedral roofs and stained glass windows.
But then, I thought, that's not really a fair question, because it doesn't account for that ineffable and inestimable value of the art -- the spirit in the art -- to the quality of our lives. Those treasures back then are still incredible treasures today. And in today's world, we're sure not creating beautiful masterpieces for the centuries to come the way they did back then.
A few others in our group shared my cathedral respite, as we decided to sit out the hike up the tallest hill in the city to visit a cathedral up there. I thought about going, because that cathedral supposedly has beautiful mosaics, but my feet are still in bad shape. Our walking tour was only supposed to be a mile or two, but I'm sure it was really three or four, and it was at least another mile for Andy and the others who hiked up the hill. Andy said he thought it was two miles total, up and back.
He said the view from the top of the hill was gorgeous, and that the cathedral up there is even more beautiful than the one I visited. But, he added, considering the hike and what I can realistically see, my decision to skip that part of the tour was a good one.
We were all tired by the time we got back to the hotel via the Lyon metro and tram system. My feet were very unhappy and when I learned that we were all supposed to take the metro again to our dinner, I told Andy we were taking a taxi. Another couple joined us, and even Andy was glad to get off his feet for the rest of the evening.
Tonight's dinner was at L'Est, a restaurant located in what used to be the easternmost railway station in Lyon. The main thing I noticed about the restaurant is that the walls were dark, but the place was well-lit so that the pristine white tablecloths positively glowed. And the white napkins had a little buttonhole in one corner, so that you could attach it to a shirt button for a good cover.
It was like trying to see in the fog with bright lights. Between the glare from the bright white tablecloths and then more glare from all the bright white shirtfronts across the table, I had to keep my sunglasses on. In fact, I just closed my eyes for almost the entire time we were there.
But I had no trouble cleaning my plate. I ordered grilled salmon, which was perfectly done and came with perfectly sautéed melt-in-your-mouth fresh spinach. I don't remember what Andy ordered except that he was not as happy with his meal as I was with mine.
Tomorrow starts early: we all meet in the lobby at 7:30 a.m., and will go with Emanuel and our teaching chef to a professional market to pick out all the ingredients we'll be cooking with later. Andy and I are looking forward to that, even if we'd rather not have to get up so early for it.
Short shots:
Lyon metro and tram:
Lyon's subway system is not as old as the one in Paris, and is much cleaner and more user-friendly. The closest subway station is about 4 blocks from our hotel, and we take it three stops to the L'atelier des Chefs, which is about two blocks from the subway. I notice that when we walk into the entrance of any station, we're hit with a whiff of air freshener, usually a pleasant scent and not overpowering. I suspect that without the air freshener, Lyon's subways would stink as much as Paris' system does. Andy says he's a few homeless people huddled near the entrances of a couple of the stations we used today. But so far, no dog poop.
The tram operates at ground level and is also very user-friendly. It stops at the subway station (different level than the subway trains, of course), and it also stops a couple blocks closer to our hotel than the subway.
Everyone uses the subway and tram systems here, buses too. Emanuel said not many people drive private cars here; it's too hard to find good parking, gas is expensive, and public transit is cheap and very good.
Graffiti:
Andy's been commenting a lot on how much graffiti there is all over Lyon -- in the subways, on professional buildings, just everywhere. That's one thing I'm glad I don't see much.
RSS Feed