July 11, 2003: Lyon to Quimper

We started with breakfast in our hotel -- café au lait (oh--MS Word fills in the accent for "é" in "café" automatically; neat) and croissants -- and began the stairway climb from Vieux Lyon up the Fourvière Hill, on the top of which were to be found, among other things, Roman ruins and a museum of archaeology. Even at about 10 AM it was already wicked hot and humid, and so the climb was not terribly pleasurable.

Eventually we reached the basilica at the top. The view from outside the church was fairly nifty ( 50-something-K JPG )

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The view inside the church was rather gaudy, but you'll have to take my word for it.

The Roman amphitheatre and odeon were closed; they seemed to be setting up for some sort of rock concert. Entry to the archaeological museum was free by way of recompense, and we could see the theatre fairly well from various points inside the never-ending museum. You yourself can see it here in a low-resolution nausea-inducing javascript 360-degree panoramic view.

The Gallo-Roman museum, as I said, was large. I was looking forward to seeing the engraved tablet containing the text of a speech by the emperor Claudius on the admission of Gallic nobles to the Roman senate, and it didn't disappoint. ( Why this is cool. )

I skimmed the tablet until I found the part where Claudius, after a long digression, addresses himself by his full name and tells himself it's time to get to the point. I think that shiznit rocks.

This is getting long, so I will switch to highlights mode:

- Took the funicular back down to the bottom of the hill, the more rapidly to find lunch.
- Lunch: excellent salads, but the best was yet to come.
- Afternoon entertainment: the Resistance Museum (Centre d'Histoire de la Résistance et de la Déportation), which is not afraid to point out how popular the Vichy government was.
- Strolling back into Vieux Lyon, we saw:
- 1. A small protest march without signs and with an unintelligible chant. There were almost as many police in riot gear as protesters. One policeman was seven feet tall. A seven-foot-tall cop in riot gear, even a French one in a relaxed mood, is an imposing sight.
- 2. People gathered to see the Tour de France, but not the TdF itself, although it came through town that day. We didn't know the schedule and were too impatient of the heat to hang around waiting somewhere just to see some guys in tight pants on bicycles.
- 3. A ridiculous trio of vehicles promoting Terminator 3, thus:
( 84K JPG )

Once back in the vicinity of our hotel, we strolled the theoretically pedestrian-only streets, happening upon a medieval clothing store and the most whimsical shoestore ever.

Across from the shoestore was the Bistrot du Palais, where fabulous moustaches are apparently a requirement for employment among the friendly waitstaff, and where we had some of the finest salads in all of Christendom. ( Certainly you will want to hear more about the salads. )

We returned to the hotel, checked out, got a taxi, and took a not-terribly-comfortable night-train to Brittany. But I wonder what all those cops with machine guns surrounding the guy in the wheelchair at the Lyon Perrache train station was all about.

At some point while we slept, J.'s grandmother died, although we were not to know that for several days yet.

(no subject)

"If our soldiers must be involved in a lengthy occupation, at least it's in a place without any dangerous weapons of mass destruction lying around."


In other news, I saw a pirate movie and had a raspberry tart last night. Huzzah!

Weekend in Brittany, part one

July 12, 2003
The nocturnal TGV train from Lyon to Quimper was not really traveling in style. J. had never taken a night train before, and was perhaps disappointed that it meant, in our case, trying to make ourselves comfortable in reclining seats, being dressed for hot weather, but feeling frigidly cold because of the rushing breeze outside the bullet train, and waking up when new passengers got on. At least our seats had little side-of-head supports, something the airlines might look into.

(But not, I assume, the airline I shall call "N---W---": J. reports that on her return flight on the 16th -- we flew on different planes -- the captain actually announced that they were in the business of safe and secure transport and any "customer service" was incidental; this announcement was matched by the attitude and behavior of the flight attendants. But I get ahead of myself.)

At any rate, we arrived in Quimper around 9 AM, and if on our European night train there were any incidents of international espionage or bizarre crimes requiring the attention of Belgian detectives, they seem not to have occurred in 2nd-class car number 17.

( Morning in Quimper )

( Goat-wrangling, and an oily beach )

( Evening, and how I received my own goat-related injury, less severe than Gérard's )

So far as I know, no goats were harmed in the making of this livejournal entry.

For the festival night itself, that's really best summed up in my unchronological entry from a couple of days ago, with the added detail that one old woman demonstrating the flax-to-linen process cheerfully harangued bystanders about the evils of artificial fibers and of bathing too frequently.