In which we explore Lugdunum

In case you were wondering, Lugdunum is the Roman name for Lyon, as Lutecia is the Roman name for Paris. Thanks in part to my son's addiction to Asterix comics, I have learned the Roman names for many places around Europe and the Middle East.

We woke up on Monday morning in our hotel in Lyon much earlier than I had been hoping, given our failure to go to bed at a reasonable hour. Our first order of business, after showering and dressing of course, was to find someplace where we could get some breakfast. Of course, we could have eaten breakfast at the hotel, but doing so would have increased the price of the stay substantially, and we were fairly certain that we could find a boulangerie that would allow all of us to eat for what one hotel breakfast would have cost.

We headed out towards the Saône River, hoping to spot a boulangerie along the way. Just before we reached the river, Blaise spotted one down a side street, so we stopped for viennoiserie: little brioches for Blaise, pain au chocolat for Cherry, torsades for the big kids, and a pain au raisins for me. Then we headed across the river with our food, heading for a playground with some benches. After we had eaten our breakfast (and discovered an extra pain au chocolat in the bottom of the bag) we walked through the streets, watching as the city got ready for the day.

We passed the funicular station to the top of the hill, and checked to see how much it would cost to ride to the top of the hill: almost 13€ round trip for our family, since there were no half price or free tickets. We decided to pass. A bit further on, we came to Saint-Jean-Baptiste (in French, but nice pictures), a beautiful cathedral built between the 12th and 15th centuries. Near the front is an astrological clock which dates from the 14th century. It gives the date, and relative positions of the sun, moon, and earth. Of course, given the date at which it was built, this was done using the assumption that the sun circled the earth, rather than the other way round. Evidently, the date will be accurate until 2019. (Perhaps we shouldn't let this be widely known, or it might become the basis for another end of the world theory.)

Next, we walked back to our hotel to check out, and dragged our luggage to the parking garage a half kilometer away. "Why didn't you pack a smaller suitcase of things for this hotel?" "Because we don't have any smaller suitcases." "Oh." We made it, eventually, and managed, with some maneuvering, to extract our vehicle. (Did I mention that we were driving an SUV? Not a vehicle particularly well suited to narrow underground French parking garages.)

We had a couple of hours before we needed to leave for Clermont-Ferrand (Blaise was giving a talk at 5, and wanted to be settled in our hotel before then), so we thought that perhaps we would see if we could drive to the Fourvière, at the top of the hill overlooking the river, and the destination of the funicular that we decided would be too expensive. We set the GPS and headed across the river and through a series of switchbacks to the top of the hill, then set out to find parking. Much to our amazement, we discovered that there was parking right in front of the Roman ruins, and that, despite our valiant attempts to find someplace to pay for it, we couldn't. Imagine, free parking right in front of where we wanted to go, in the 3rd biggest city in France.

We set off up the path to the top of the ruins, walking across stages (and discovering afterwards that everyone sitting on the seats could hear everything we said, thanks to the amazing acoustics) and up the steps to the top of the theatre. There we discovered a warren of rooms and passageways to explore, walking through arched water channels and doorways to see as much as we could. Eventually, we made our way across to the Odeon (little theatre), and walked across the stage, made of a rainbow stones from all over the known world, circa 400 AD. Amazingly, it appears completely unscathed by its exposure to the elements over time. At that point we headed back to our car, where we lunched on cookies and oranges (very healthy, I know), and headed for Clermont-Ferrand.

After passing through the plain of Gergovia, we arrived in Clermont-Ferrand, found our hotel, and settled in. Blaise left almost immediately for his talk, and I nursed my headache with a cup of coffee (which I should have drunk in the morning, before the headache started), and put away our things. The kids cooperatively played with PlayDoh. Then, we headed for the large park we had seen driving in, hoping that it might have a playground. It did, and so the kids played for an hour or so before we headed back to the hotel to wait for Blaise's return, and dinner.