La Fête, Last Day (for Us)

The crowds descended in earnest on Saturday. We went to the open-air market on the quai to scrounge up breakfast goodies for two days. We picked up some tangerines, yogurt, St. Marcellin cheese, and two briks, North African pastries stuffed with meat or tuna. Both were good.

We did our main shopping of the Lyon trip this day. Julian had lost one of his gloves, and my gloves weren’t up to Lyon’s cold and damp, so we walked up to the North Face store to get replacements. We also did another load of laundry, then took a walk down to Place Bellecour. We found a cookbook store, In Cuisine, where we had caffeine and a snack. I also picked up a small French-English Lyonnais cookbook.

We walked over to Vieux Lyon to check out the chances of going to the installations on the top of the hill. Several brass bands were stationed throughout the neighborhood. These buskers are usually dressed in crazy attire and play tunes not associated with a standard brass band. Some groups were better than others. When we saw the crowds in the streets of Vieux Lyon, we figured that going to see the installations on Fourvière hill was not in our cards. We went back to the hotel and made dinner reservations at a Korean restaurant down the street from the hotel, Gang-Nam. I was worried that it was just a gimmicky joint and we’d have our eardrums blasted out with K-Pop tunes. Quelle surprise – it was a serious and good restaurant. We had the bul gogi menu for two. The meat and mini bi bim bap bowl were excellent. The kim chi was on the bland side. I wonder if they had to tone down the capsaicin for French tastes.

After dinner we went back to the quai so Julian could record the light show on the basilica, cathedral, and the Palace of Justice. The spot where he set up the camera offered the best view, but the sound was muted. So we recorded the sound near one of the speakers, so he could splice them together when we get home. I’ll have the songs played during that light show as earworms for weeks. We chanced one look at the Théâtre des Célestins installation. Unlike the earlier evening, the sound system was working. The chants were very interesting.

Going back to the hotel was akin to swimming in a large school of fish. We managed to get out of the crowd and pick up some brioche for breakfast the next day. Once we returned to the hotel, it was time to pack for our next stop – Colmar.