Lights out in Vieux Lyon!

Jeudi 9th decembre: By day we continued to explore Lyon's sites of interest and by night we continued to wander around the city centre and enjoy the lights of the Fete des Lumieres. 
On a very chilly but clear Thursday morning, Cathy and I set off to do some more sightseeing.
Below are some of the interesting installations in Rue de la Republique: over-sized desk lamps in the main shopping street in Lyon.

 There are many stalls selling marrons chauds - hot chestnuts - roasted , but this little train is one of the more eye-catching ones! However, I still wasn't tempted to buy some, yet.....

 ..... a cute window dressing and the merry-go-round and fountain ( I had a photo of this pond all white with snow and semi-frozen on our first day) where we will return at night to see the light display,

 I have been very impressed with the French way of decorating shop windows for christmas - often so simple yet so stylish! Two different trees and elegantly boxed Chartreuse (wine I presume) looks quite Christmassy........

More carved heavy wooden doors and gorgeous windows!

Below is the theatre at Place des Celestines where last night we saw what I call the haunted house light display - really called Lyrical perspectives by 1024 Architecture. As you can see it is a very elegant building, not at all what it seeked last night!

The Saone river is racing to meet the Rhone several kilomentes downstream, the confluence is near the soccer stadium Stade de Gerland in the La Mulatiere outer suburb where we are going to watch a game on Sunday evening. should be fun, and my first soccer game ever!

We noticed that the river is swollen and flowing very fast - quite treacherous really with its freezing temperatures, strong current and many whirlpools and eddies, and we decided that one wouldn't last more than a few minutes if you were unlucky enough to fall in!

Crossing La Saone at Pont Bonaparte, heading towards St-Georges church which is one in a group of 3 must-see and famous churches on the west bank of the Saone River in Vieux Lyon. The other churches are St-Paul and St-Jean. Vieux Lyon and its 3 districts are proof of the splendour of the town in the 15th and 16th centuries. In 1964, Andre Malraux, then Minister for Culture, made Vieux Lyon the first protected zone in France, with much of the preservation work since the 1950s, carried out by the association "La Renaissance du Vieux Lyon", and this included defeating attempts to demolish it.

Looking across to St-Jean on the river bank and the imposing Fourvier Basilica above.

We arrived at St-Georges church at the south end of Vieux Lyon - another imposing stone church with gorgeous details such as carved arches above and around the doors, spires, tall walls supported by buttresses, superb windows etc, to find thet is was unfortunately closed, so we will return another day!

In the adjacent Place Frances Bertas, we saw this quaint cafe restaurant la terrace and in the cobble-stoned street side street, a gift shop Le Carreau de St Georges, where the owner made pottery plates, tiles and decorations .....

We then continued on along Rue St Georges......

We came across the Guignol Theatre where the very famous guignol puppet was created in 1797, by 28 year-old Laurent Mourget, son of a Canut silk weaver. He was a tooth puller, or dentist, and to attract customers, he set up a puppet show presenting Italian theatre classics.

In 1808, he made a puppet to whom he gave his own round face, two mischievious eyes and and a funny little turned up nose.  He dressed him like the Canut workers of the day with a brown jacket with gold buttons and a red bow tie. On his head, he put a soft black leather hat with flaps turned down on his sarsifis (braided ponytail tied with a ribbon).

the corners of buildings have small statues and figures ............

 We walked past St-Jean yet again and past the Guignol Theatre in Rue St-Jean.

By this time, 1.30pm, we were getting hungry, and Cathy spotted a huge wok-type pan filled with hot meat, and as she was rather cold as a result of being underdressed ( no socks, gloves or scarf) and being a real carnivore,  thought she should try one of their local kebabs - really a bagette filled with a special mixture of beef, pork and vegetables cooked up on the sidewalk: all this for 4 E.

I waited to reach the Boulangerie that I had spotted the other day to sample one of their fantastic frnech crusty 3 cheese pizzas - yum! I also samplesw some a local biscuit with almonds ...........

We continued on with our mission to see St-Paul the last of the 3 churches at the north end of Vieux Lyon.
It has a most ornate spire and sits right on the street, with cars parked right up to its front door.

 

it has an unusual pair of nested octagonal cupolas??

 Place Gerson, named after the chancellor of Frances/Lyon's University .......

 I liked these christmas window in a cafe callede Les Fines Gueules ...

That evening we went out to see some more highlights of Fete des Lumieres. from Place Bellecour, we walked towards Le Rhone via Place Antonin Poncet, spotting this gorgeous scene in the twilight. The huge Japanese flower scultpure in the foreground was quite controversial according to Fabienne, and in the background you can see the ferris wheel at Place Bellecour and behind it is Notre Dame on Fourvier Hill.

The tall bell tower on the LHS is the only remaining vestige of Charity Hospital.

Le Foyer is a charitable organistion which raise money for the homeless during the light festival by selling candle holders with tea light candles (with a complementary festive chocolate and maps of the festival) for 2 euro to put on your window sill on the opening night of the festival 8 decembre. I bought one outside St-Jean Cathedrale.

The photo above right is of traffric Quai Docteur Gailleton which runns along Le Rhone, into a tunnel and connects up with the motorway out of Lyon.
Below are scenes looking across the fast-flowing Le Rhone to the magnificient buildings with their traditional French architecture- one of the universities is below

We then headed back west into the area between the rivers and found this captivating installation of two connected polyhedra (pentagonal dodecahedron?) one higher than the other, which changed colour and emitted interesting sounds, like a creature hatching from a cocoon!

Then we walked along pretty Rue de la Charite...

We walked to the southern end of the street to Place Carnot where we enjoyed the lights and activity of the Christmas Market - food, hand made gifts and  a Rotary fundraiser where you can pay 5euro to send a letter to Santa and receive a reply

In Rue de l'Abbaye d'Ainay we went into the impressive l'Abbaye d'Ainay with its superb painted ceilings and massive marble columns.

The decorations hanging over this street look like coloured snowballs or pincushions!

Back through Place Bellecour and we stayed to watch the images projected onto the screen on the huge ferris wheel - we felt like we were at a drive-in sans cars!! It included a National Geographic mini movie showing superb natural landscapes  from around the world........

.....a coastal landscape....

.... the tail of a whale shark ( I missed the body of the shark!)......

...an Africa plain ......

We walked to the Saone and crossed at Pont Bonaparte and stopped to watch a cycle of the jumping squiggly lights set up along the river banks and across Pass de Palais ( a walking bridge) - the lights reflected in the river to great effect........

We also marvelled at the changing and synchronised colours of the light show on the apses of St-Jean and Notre Dame Basilica above on Fourvier hill. The display is called Sun Meets Moon as there was meant to be a large white disk lifted by a crane in Place St-Jean between the churches, to represent the moon. we found out that it was too windy for the disk to be raised this evening, maybe tomorrow night? More on this later.

Some more marrons chauds .......

we walked back into Vieux Lyon and past the light display at the St-Jean Palace courtyard
entitled From Shadow to Light wgich was done by students from a school and consisted of coloured balls of light suspended on wires spanning the courtyard - gorgeous!,

 We then walked along Rue St-Jean , yet again, to find the light display at Gare St-Paul, on the way we saw these decorations in a cobble-stoned side street.

 We found Gare St-Paul ( a TGV train station,  no metro here) and the display entitled Incongruities of St-Paul -  a story involving a boy, a girl and bunch of flowers and of course a train, very cleverly told using spotlights and images projected onto the facde of the building. Below, you can see this with the lit spire of Cathedrale St-Paul.

 We wewre walking back to Vieux Lyon metro station when all of a sudden, all the lights went out - the whole of Vieux Lyon, if not Lyon, was thrown into darkness. We had no way of finding our way safely along the street, so we decided to take refuge in the cafe/restaurant we happened to be standing out the front of, quite fortuitous really, as the candles on tyhe window sill and at each table were the only lights we could see.

With my flash.....

Once inside, we removed out coats, hats and gloves and settled ourselves snugly at the bar, some candles were set up for us and we ordered hot or cold drinks and waited for the lights to come back on, the waitress told us that this happens every year during the Fete des Lumieres because of the millions of extra lights on and extra power required for all the displays throughout the city!!
The lights returned much too soon for our liking, so we finished our drinks and walked to the station.

 Here is a photo gtaken by Belinda of herself and Craig ...

So, there is my account of the day when the lights went out in Vieux Lyon!!