Hi!
Up this morning about 7-ish, to what looked like – possibly – a clearish sort of day with a chance of blue skies! Incredible! Can’t be – really? Ah well! Today was R’s day to go to Chez Jules for our breakfast, and he reported that yes, it looked to be a nice day! Wow!! Now we need to go out and do something in it!
While we don’t ordinarily do two “culture” days in a row, today we decided that a visit to the Beaux-Arts Museum in Lyon was the thing to do. We had visited on our last trip, and found it to be a really good smaller museum, so today was the day to go. We caught the C3 bus at Gare St. Paul and arrived just on 10 am, their opening time. Health passes being checked, we purchased our tickets and in we went.
We started on the first floor, which is where their antiquities are located. They have a nice collection although not terribly large, but the Romans and the Egyptians are very well represented. Apparently at one point in the past, there was an archaeologist from Lyon who did do some digging in Egypt, and they have him to thank for the majority of their collection.
(Note: It is a very interesting time right now in the museum world, as the question of Provenance – WHERE did it come from, and was it obtained legally or not? - continues to pop up in the news. Countries are returning artifacts to their original sources – not happily in all instances, I believe – but especially for African countries, where European countries held colonial rule, some things are being returned and thereby giving back some of these countries’ heritage.)
From the first floor antiquities collection, we headed to the second floors’ painting collection. As many people who know me know I’m not the biggest “flat” art person around – just call me a Philistine…the collection was predominantly religious art from the 14th and 15th centuries. They did have several rooms filled with Impressionist work, though, which we thoroughly enjoyed. They had several Renoir, Monet, Manet and Sisley works that were exceptional. Robert especially loves the London buildings seen through a mist that Monet liked to do, and we enjoyed this part of the collection very much. (Bob and Stew note: We also saw a good deal of our favorite, St. Sebastian, one way or another!)
At this point, we had absorbed about as much culture as we could deal with in a morning, and decided it was definitely time for lunch! And, just as it happened, the Entrecote Restaurant of Lyon was just a block or two away!
Robert at Entrecote! Instead of the Dollor store,
we found the 2 Euro store!
The first Entrecote restaurants we visited were in Paris, but now (I’m thinking from a different branch of the family than those there) they have spread out to Lyon, Marseille and I think even Barcelona! The formula is just about identical: You basically have three choices to make: How do you like your steak cooked; what do you want to drink, and do you want dessert? So! We were seated in a lovely room, and we wanted steaks rare (saignant, in French), red wine of the region (Cote du Rhone) to drink, and of course we would have dessert! YEAH!
The first thing to arrive (as in Paris) was a small salad of Romaine lettuce with a light, mustard vinaigrette and some walnuts sprinkled on top. Excellent!
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| Lovely Salad! |
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| In a lovely room! |
Then came our steaks – perfectly cooked and with a HUGE pile of French fries! The last time we had been to an Entrecote, the wait staff held back half of our frites and steak until we had finished your first serving, but this time, they actually put the warmer candles under individual serving dishes per table. (I’m thinking that might be a Covid thing?). At any rate, the steaks were perfectly (un) cooked (in our case) and the French fries were definitely worth dreaming about! The steaks also come with a “secret sauce” – or, sauce secret, as Robert was told the first time he asked what was in it. And yes, it’s still a secret!
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| Amazing meal! |
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| Truly world class steak and fries! |
So … After that came my profiteroles with ice cream and chocolate sauce (wonderful!) and R’s cup of fresh fruit of the season with Kirsch. He ate every bite! We had a very enjoyable dining experience, and I can assure you that I for one will not be eating another meal tonight! Maybe this will be another of those – eat once every two days type of thing!
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| Amazing Profiteroles! |
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| R's fruit with Kirsch |
From the restaurant, we decided to investigate something I noted on a map yesterday – the Mur Peint Hommage a Diego Rivera – a homage to Diego Rivera painted on a building in Lyon a few years ago.
As this took us past both the confluence of the Saone and the Rhone, as well as the fabulous Confluence Museum, we thought that would be a nice thing to see. So … back on the C3 bus and took it close to the end, the Part-Dieu train station where we had such a hard time finding a cab a few days ago. (It’s truly amazing how much better a good map and a transport pass can mean to a traveler!)
Front entrance of Confluence Museum Interesting museum building! One Diego Rivera Hommage Mural Second Diego Rivera Mural Wall
From the C3 we took a T1 tram, all the way to its final point at the southern edge of the city. The Diego Rivera murals were only a block or so away, but they were very impressive! Decided after that, that we had had a full day of sight-seeing, and we headed back to the apartment.
This time, we took the T1 to the Archives stop, and got off and transferred to an S1 bus, which just happened to go back to Gare St. Paul, which is our closest stop! I have to admit that I did stop in at Chez Jules and purchase a tartelette de citron (lemon tart); we’ll see if it gets eaten today or is left over for tomorrow!
So, on that note, I will close for today!
Lots of love,
m
xxx
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