Who’s new enough, most now, most youngest

Enough to eye you most again?

Who’ll love the rose that love wore longest,

Yet say it fresher than quick rain?

I’ll see. I’ll say. I’ll find the word.

All earth must lilt, then, willy-nilly

And vibrate one rich triple-chord

Of August, wine, and waterlily.

from Again! Again! by the enigmatic Pieter Vierick, one of my amazing professors at Mount Holyoke College

I was going through the mess of my computer files, looking for an administrative document that I know is somewhere amidst the years worth of scans and drafts, when I came across this piece I wrote almost four years ago, when my family was new to Lyon.  Reading through it I could remember vividly how it felt to be discovering this lovely city, to feel torn between wishing I was still in Paris where everything was familiar, and wishing we could just be settled already, with friends and community in place.

Well, it happened, as it was bound to: We got settled, we made a life, we made work, friends, community, home…and now off we go again, ironically to Geneva, where this little piece was first published to provide weekend trip ideas to folks in Switzerland.

In the midst of the move I have little energy to write something new, so am re-running this piece to say an enormous MERCI BEAUCOUP to Lyon – for everything!  We have loved you so very much! 

From the Geneva Family Diaries, 2011:

When it was proposed that I contribute a piece about visiting Lyon to the Geneva Family Diaries, my first reaction was that I was hardly the right person to offer this insight. After all, there are many Lyon Guidebooks that cover the Roman ruins, Fourvière, the museums, the verdant parc de la Tête d’Or and it’s zoo, the new ecological neighborhood of Confluence….whereas I have lived here for less than a year — and in that year have spent two days per week in Paris, where I moved from and still work. Furthermore, as the mother of two kids, much of my experience on the ground in Lyon has revolved around getting them settled into their new lives.

“Just describe our typical Saturday errand circuit,” my husband said, over a glass of Côte du Rhône.   We were sitting on the shaded deck of the Le Quinze, one of many peniche bars that rest in the blue-black waters of the Rhône.

My mind travelled back over the last eleven months, since we arrived on the TGV from Paris, the kids and a heap of suitcases in tow. All the installation difficulties had rapidly put an end to the fantasy that our new life in Lyon was going to be immediately filled with weekends of leisure in the nearby mountains. We had spent the better part of the year in the center of the city, on the presqu’ile, the “almost island” where we live, that juts out between the two rivers that wind along either side of it, causing our chronic decisional conundrum: which river to gravitate towards? The mood of each river is distinct, for if the Rhone can be described as powerful and imposing, with its dark, strong current, the Saône is it’s dreamy sibling, quietly flowing past the base of the Fourvière and Vieux Lyon, a snapshot so picture perfect that it’s hard to believe that it’s not the idealized sketch of an illustrator trying to evoke a happy medieval village in a child’s fairytale storybook.

One of the nicest things about Lyon is how small it actually is….Small enough to traverse several times in a day, convenient for a family encumbered by commercial tasks and children who don’t want to sightsee (but who are always happy to have a sirop in a groovy café). As my husband pointed out, just the act of running errands had provided us a year of inadvertent walking tours along and between the two rivers, starting from our address on Place Bellecour, the “Point Zero” of Lyon, the heart of the Presqu’ile, from which all other distances are measured.

Five minutes from Bellecour is the Rhone, where one can cross over to the East Bank to stroll amidst the bikers, runners, rollerbladers, and skater/BMX-dudes. When the weather is grey and drizzly I think of this side of Lyon as a cross between Paris and Seattle (when it’s sunny, moreso like Paris and Venice Beach, California) as the architectural landscape is as elegant as any you’d see in Paris, yet the demographic so entirely sporty. The pedestrian Passerelle du College, one of 30 plus bridges in Lyon, hangs gracefully a half kilometer ahead to the North, making for an easy short cut back onto the Presqu’ile.   Once you’ve crossed over, you can meander through the neighborhoods of l’Opéra and Place des Terreaux, with its ornate Fontaine Bartholdi, a perfect marker for the art supply and bricolage stores that dot the neighborhood. There is no shortage of fabulous restaurants in Lyon, but only one I will mention here, simply for the absolute loveliness of the place: The café at the Musée des Beaux Arts. While Lyon is known for its Bouchons – restaurants of heavy traditional food such as cow’s stomach or brain or muzzle – the restaurant at the musée is not one of them, and that is the reason I like it — along with the huge colorful mural at the back wall of the restaurant and the open view to the idyllic courtyard below.

If you’ve ever thumbed through the pages of Vogue or GQ and thought, “Who wears such fancy clothes?” rest assured that the answer can be found, right here in Lyon, on the fashionable high end Rue du President Edouard Herriot. Clean shaven and cologned men in Rolexes and freshly pressed Armani stroll with women in Yves Saint Laurent, Max Mara, Louis Vuitton, Hermes, Cartier...You get the picture. Très bourgeois. Très fun people-watching….although don’t get so engrossed in gawking at the elegant army of consumers out spending their fortunes that you overlook the resplendent fountain at the Place des Jacobins, or the delightful Théatre des Célestins. And for sweet tooths, a must of the neighbohood is the patisserie Pignol on rue Emile Zola.

Back at Place Bellecour the children can run around like maniacs while you photograph the statue of Louis XIV on his horse. Then amble through the art galleried streets of the Quartier Ainay, the old Catholic neighborhood that sprang up a few hundred years ago around the Basilica of Saint Martin d’Ainay, before heading west towards the Saone, crossing the Pont Bonaparte into the lovely Quartier Saint Jean, past the Cathédrale of the same name, through the winding, cobblestoned streets of Vieux Lyon. Find your way to the Passerelle Saint Vincent to cross back over to the Presqu’ile, to watch the sunset over the hills of the Croix Rousse, a hillside quartier who’s rosy red and yellow architecture evokes the Amalfi Coast.

We did exactly this one hot evening a few weeks ago, stopping for a cooling panache at the Buvette Saint Antoine, a laid back open air bar that looks out over the water. We sat in contented silence until suddenly the strains of a wistful accordéon lilted towards us from a boat passing by. The words of the old man singing floated up to our ears before the sound finally faded from our reach:

Elle me dit des mots d’amour,
Des mots de tous les jours,
Et ca me fait quelque chose.

Elle est entré dans mon coeur
Une part de bonheur
Dont je connais la cause.

I squeezed my husband’s hand and sighed: La vie en Rose.

And so it was.