Lyon 2
I am not very good at holidays. Today I did not amble, I positively hoovered up sites. Three sites of interest and learning (one lovely and fascinating; one sad and infuriating; one a mess), plus one site of absolute gourmandise. I avoided what were obviously rather horrible demos in town (gilets jaunes, 6 months on, still bloody annoying - whichever of you wrote Frexit on the passerelle, sod you very much), and got to places which are largely unfamiliar. I was however sadly done out of going on a trackless trolleybus, a pleasure which would only really please the boyf (the punchline of a favourite joke), due to perturbations of the usual routes (presumably they couldn’t run with the pantograph all the way, so it was a normal bus) and I am a little sad about that. Otherwise, all good.
I started with an old favourite - the museum of printing and communications. Lyon has always been a massive trade place, and a good place for industrial processes to develop (see also silk, which I mentioned yesterday). It was big In the early print trade, and this museum covers that, but it also comes all the way up to date, looking at adverts, zines, the decline of hot-metal and now of all forms of print. It’s in the first town hall of Lyon, which is a gorgeous building, as a bonus. I think the thing I’ll take away is that I finally understood the different mechanical processes between printing engravings and printing books (rolly-squeezy vs a flat press, basically). I’ve learned about each separately, but having them in consecutive rooms with actual presses finally made me twig. I even said as much to the room guide, which is a level of technical French I don’t really have, but he was pleased.
Then I went off the town centre Presqu’ile to the right bank of the Rhone, which always means more modern stuff. In this case the rather swish Halles de Lyon, the central market, named for Paul Bocuse, the uberchef who put modern Lyon on the culinary map. Halles are always a bit of a mix, and I’d heard these were a bit on the snob side, but I think that’s Lyon-snob rather than anything unacceptable - this is a very laid-back city, but compared with even a mildly snotty Parisian, this was like being welcomed by a golden retriever on a good day. As usual I stalked around in disorganised fashion, doubling back several times before finally buying some food (duck parmentier, a lovely little tomato tartlet, a fabulous patisserie), and even longer before finally sitting down to lunch. These Halles have far more restaurant-type spots than most, which is very handy. They aren’t luxurious (except maybe the oyster bars, but I don’t do extreme shellfish so I didn’t test), but you get nice food in an energetic space. I had a salad starter are with mini quenelles de brochet - they much the local thing but my love of fish mousse is extremely limited (these are pike, I feared a repeat of brandade de morue which I can’t really eat without retching). But they were good, lots of dill and not too squishy. Tick, off the list. Main was half a duck breast with a potato, a courgette and a small stuffed tomato. Really delicious, and the right sort of amount for if you want to do something in the afternoon. Very pleasing.
I popped back to my hotel to drop off the food for dinner. Then I reckoned I had time to go to the nearest museum to me, one I haven’t visited before. It’s the museum of deportations and the resistance, about life in Lyon and beyond during 1940-4on5. It’s *in* a building which was used as Gestapo headquarters for over a year. Klaus Barbie worked here. There is a permanent exhibition which is mostly about the overall picture of the war years in Lyon, but with lots on individuals, including many, many people who were deported, mostly to Auschwitz. An installation of a small number of rooms going from a nice 1930s living room down the dank concrete stairs to… well, in the end, a secret printing press (Lyon’s print tradition carried on, both collaborationist and resistant), but the fear of what might await you was intense. It’s not graphic, but it does take away any desire ab to skim through. They also do temporary exhibitions, currently one on young people as affected by the war - everything from conscription to tedium of lockdown and above all acts of protest and resistance. Yellow stars being worn in protest when the Jewish citizens were first forced to wear them. And last letters from so, so many young people shot as resistants. It was very good, is all I’m really going to say. I cried a lot.
I took a walk across the Rhone rather than immediately leap into another thing. It’s a huge, beautiful river here, about to devour the Saone and become a slightly too big behemoth flowing south. Comforting, compared with the museum.
I was heading south for my final stop, the Musee des Confluences. This is very new, very shiny, very big and very lauded. It’s a museum of ‘natural history and human civilisation’ asking big questions about who we are and where we are going. Ahem. It has a jolly nice view from the roof. Good ice cream too. The permanent exhibitions were all I looked at and they were… mixed. It’s partly an honest effort at comparative anthropology (there were some really nice comparisons of different cultures’ takes on creation and death, though I wonder at what point saying ‘this is a lovely Australian tradition and here’s an Alaskan and a Solomon Islands, aren’t they all really similar!’ becomes appropriation; maybe have some respect for difference too); partly an eco museum (we are all guilty! Look at the lovely animals! Don’t destroy the environment for futile human purposes! [which for a museum built on reclaimed wetland and taking maybe 40 times the footprint it needs for its displays is…. Interesting]); and partly just a great big STATEMENT museum without an awful lot to say. I think the basic message is we’re killing the planet and all human values are crappy capitalist and doomed, without anything constructive. I think I’d probably have been a bit underwhelmed anyway, but this after reading a load of 16 year olds writing brave letters to their mothers before being shot for acts of mad bravery against occupying forces… I wasn’t in the mood for whiffly Western guilt that doesn’t engage with people as individuals. Every time someone looks at the 7bn current world population and charts its rise since 1900 with a tut tut tut, I wonder whether the curator is volunteering to dispose of the extra 5.5billion people. And today, I was *not* in the mood.
Still, nice café. Nice view of the confluence. Weird choice of destination museum for Lyonnais families, which it really is. But eh, it was interesting to go out that way. And despite the demos causing perturbations in the tramways, I managed to get back to the hotel before the huge dark clouds burst. Dinner, half-hearted Eurovision, and my last full day here tomorrow. I’m going to do fine art, possibly hipster places or at least a funicular again, and likely a walking tour (booked, but weather dependent - it was free with the CityCard so I’m not too worried about skipping out if it’s pouring).
This entry was originally posted at https://bruttimabuoni.dreamwidth.org/933608.html. You can comment here or there as you please!
I started with an old favourite - the museum of printing and communications. Lyon has always been a massive trade place, and a good place for industrial processes to develop (see also silk, which I mentioned yesterday). It was big In the early print trade, and this museum covers that, but it also comes all the way up to date, looking at adverts, zines, the decline of hot-metal and now of all forms of print. It’s in the first town hall of Lyon, which is a gorgeous building, as a bonus. I think the thing I’ll take away is that I finally understood the different mechanical processes between printing engravings and printing books (rolly-squeezy vs a flat press, basically). I’ve learned about each separately, but having them in consecutive rooms with actual presses finally made me twig. I even said as much to the room guide, which is a level of technical French I don’t really have, but he was pleased.
Then I went off the town centre Presqu’ile to the right bank of the Rhone, which always means more modern stuff. In this case the rather swish Halles de Lyon, the central market, named for Paul Bocuse, the uberchef who put modern Lyon on the culinary map. Halles are always a bit of a mix, and I’d heard these were a bit on the snob side, but I think that’s Lyon-snob rather than anything unacceptable - this is a very laid-back city, but compared with even a mildly snotty Parisian, this was like being welcomed by a golden retriever on a good day. As usual I stalked around in disorganised fashion, doubling back several times before finally buying some food (duck parmentier, a lovely little tomato tartlet, a fabulous patisserie), and even longer before finally sitting down to lunch. These Halles have far more restaurant-type spots than most, which is very handy. They aren’t luxurious (except maybe the oyster bars, but I don’t do extreme shellfish so I didn’t test), but you get nice food in an energetic space. I had a salad starter are with mini quenelles de brochet - they much the local thing but my love of fish mousse is extremely limited (these are pike, I feared a repeat of brandade de morue which I can’t really eat without retching). But they were good, lots of dill and not too squishy. Tick, off the list. Main was half a duck breast with a potato, a courgette and a small stuffed tomato. Really delicious, and the right sort of amount for if you want to do something in the afternoon. Very pleasing.
I popped back to my hotel to drop off the food for dinner. Then I reckoned I had time to go to the nearest museum to me, one I haven’t visited before. It’s the museum of deportations and the resistance, about life in Lyon and beyond during 1940-4on5. It’s *in* a building which was used as Gestapo headquarters for over a year. Klaus Barbie worked here. There is a permanent exhibition which is mostly about the overall picture of the war years in Lyon, but with lots on individuals, including many, many people who were deported, mostly to Auschwitz. An installation of a small number of rooms going from a nice 1930s living room down the dank concrete stairs to… well, in the end, a secret printing press (Lyon’s print tradition carried on, both collaborationist and resistant), but the fear of what might await you was intense. It’s not graphic, but it does take away any desire ab to skim through. They also do temporary exhibitions, currently one on young people as affected by the war - everything from conscription to tedium of lockdown and above all acts of protest and resistance. Yellow stars being worn in protest when the Jewish citizens were first forced to wear them. And last letters from so, so many young people shot as resistants. It was very good, is all I’m really going to say. I cried a lot.
I took a walk across the Rhone rather than immediately leap into another thing. It’s a huge, beautiful river here, about to devour the Saone and become a slightly too big behemoth flowing south. Comforting, compared with the museum.
I was heading south for my final stop, the Musee des Confluences. This is very new, very shiny, very big and very lauded. It’s a museum of ‘natural history and human civilisation’ asking big questions about who we are and where we are going. Ahem. It has a jolly nice view from the roof. Good ice cream too. The permanent exhibitions were all I looked at and they were… mixed. It’s partly an honest effort at comparative anthropology (there were some really nice comparisons of different cultures’ takes on creation and death, though I wonder at what point saying ‘this is a lovely Australian tradition and here’s an Alaskan and a Solomon Islands, aren’t they all really similar!’ becomes appropriation; maybe have some respect for difference too); partly an eco museum (we are all guilty! Look at the lovely animals! Don’t destroy the environment for futile human purposes! [which for a museum built on reclaimed wetland and taking maybe 40 times the footprint it needs for its displays is…. Interesting]); and partly just a great big STATEMENT museum without an awful lot to say. I think the basic message is we’re killing the planet and all human values are crappy capitalist and doomed, without anything constructive. I think I’d probably have been a bit underwhelmed anyway, but this after reading a load of 16 year olds writing brave letters to their mothers before being shot for acts of mad bravery against occupying forces… I wasn’t in the mood for whiffly Western guilt that doesn’t engage with people as individuals. Every time someone looks at the 7bn current world population and charts its rise since 1900 with a tut tut tut, I wonder whether the curator is volunteering to dispose of the extra 5.5billion people. And today, I was *not* in the mood.
Still, nice café. Nice view of the confluence. Weird choice of destination museum for Lyonnais families, which it really is. But eh, it was interesting to go out that way. And despite the demos causing perturbations in the tramways, I managed to get back to the hotel before the huge dark clouds burst. Dinner, half-hearted Eurovision, and my last full day here tomorrow. I’m going to do fine art, possibly hipster places or at least a funicular again, and likely a walking tour (booked, but weather dependent - it was free with the CityCard so I’m not too worried about skipping out if it’s pouring).
This entry was originally posted at https://bruttimabuoni.dreamwidth.org/933608.html. You can comment here or there as you please!