We took a walking/train excursion in Vienne this morning. The tour started in a lovely park lots of flowers, fountains and pools…
And some remains
of an ancient Roman road.
More sights in Vienne.
The walking tour route was noted by small bronze plaques on the streets with an oak tree on them.
We visited the very early St. Pierre church (5th century) that is now a lapidary museum (lots of old stone items).
The church is so old it has Roman style arches inside to hold up the ceiling instead of the vaulted or ribbed ceilings seen in later churches. This is one of the oldest surviving churches in France. There were mosaics, statuary and all manner of interesting artifacts.
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More St. Pierre Museum
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Next was the St. Maurice Cathedral (exterior only)…
And the Roman Temple of Augustus. It was in pretty good shape as it was converted to a church for a while.
Nearby was this very interesting cow sculpture.
We made our way over to the city hall…
where boarded the tourist train for the ride up the side of the hill to the Belvedere de Pipet. There were great views of the city and the river from up here.
We also had good views of the Roman Theater directly below.
We stopped in to see the little Chapel of Notre Dame de Pipet...
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More Vienne
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before heading back down to the ship. It was a very short visit but we think we saw most of the important sights in Vienne.
While we had
lunch the ship made it’s way up to Lyon in time for afternoon shore excursions.
One of the first prominent sights we saw
was the Museum of the Confluence that sits on the end of an long peninsula
where the Rhone and the Soane Rivers meet.
On this trip we went under some very low bridges. For some, they had to take down the railings on the sun deck, and lower the bridge(via hydraulics).
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Video of going under a low bridge
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And we had good
views of Lyon along the Rhone River as well.
We split up today and took separate shore excursion. Mary had been in Lyon years before and had seen quite a bit so she opted for a visit to Les Halles de Lyon Paul Bocus (a famous Lyon chef with several Michelin starred restaurants). Paul opted for a walking tour of Lyon.
Les Halles (pronounced Lay Al) was right next to a couple of very interesting modern buildings, The Pencil…
and The Eraser.
The market was filled with lots of stalls with yummy looking foods. Several of the places we stopped had tasting trays all prepared for us to sample.
We did get to try cheese,
French deli type meats,
breads,
terrines,
and lots of sweets.
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More Les Halles
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Paul’s walking tour was based in the old town. Lyon was an early center for the manufacture of silk products.
They were bused up to the top of the hill where they visited the Basilica Notre Dame de Fournviere.
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More Basilica Notre Dame de Fourviere
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From there they had great views of Lyon with the Soane and the Rhone Rivers.
There were also some Roman Ruins at the top of the hill.
From their they walked down into the Old Town of Lyon with its windy streets,
traboules (passageways from one street to another),
towers on the corner of buildings that house open staircases,
and beautiful old buildings.
They also visited the Cathedral of St. John the Baptist
We both very much enjoyed our separate tours. Lyon is a wonderful city…a feast for the eye with lots of little treasures.
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