Lyon’s Musée des Beaux Arts is a fantastic fine arts museum with a wide-ranging collection from Egyptian antiquities to modern art. We spent well over an hour in the museum one afternoon. Tickets cost a reasonable €8.
The work is exhibited over three floors, starting with large sculptures in the chapel. From there it is up one floor to the permanent collection, exhibited largely in chronological order.
First, antiquities (Egyptian, Roman, and Islamic), followed by a room full of coins and medallions on display, before proceeding to objects and sculptures from the 16th to 20th centuries. Included in this section is a display of art nouveau furniture from Hector Guimard. We definitely were not expecting to see a set up bedroom in the museum.
The top floor is where the paintings are located. Starting with religious works from 14th century and continuing through 20th century modern art. For the most part the paintings are organized by date and nationality of the artists.
In case you are wondering about a specific work of art, each room contains a laminated information sheet that you can consult. If you know French. Why the information sheets are not printed in multiple languages is beyond me. For such a prominent museum, it is a bit surprising that all of the signs are in French only. Yes, we are in France but this place is also a tourist magnet.
You can pick up an English language map of the museum at the entry, but it tells you nothing about the artwork.
Another ticket option is Lyon’s museum card, Carte Musées, available for €25. It provides unlimited admission to six different are museums over the course of a year. This is not the tourist card.
While we have purchased similar museum cards in other cities, we opted against buying Lyon’s museum card for the simple reason that we were not interested in the three of the six museums and one was too far outside the city for us to easily reach. It did not make financial sense to buy the card to visit two museums at most. Really you need to visit at least four of the museums to make this card worthwhile.
There is one other catch. Apparently you have to attach your photo onto the card after purchase. I guess you could glue an extra passport photo onto it? We never had to cross this bridge, but it is something to keep in mind as securing a photo will increase the effective cost of the card. If you ever need a reason to visit a photo booth at the train station, I guess this is it.
In addition to being the gastronomy capital of France, Lyon is well known for the large murals that are found around town on the sides of buildings.
Musée Urbain Tony Garnier features 25 murals which illustrate the works and themes of Tony Garnier (1869-1948), a prominent architect and urban planner from Lyon. Garnier designed the housing project and Les Etats-Unis (Lyon’s 8th district), where these murals are located.
At the museum you can join a tour (certain dates and times, 90 minutes, €10) or buy a guidebook (€5). Or, you can do what we did, go in the morning when the museum is closed and just walk around and take it in.
It felt somewhat odd walking around a housing project to look at building sized murals. The locals must be used to it as no one gave us a second glance.
Across town is another famous mural, Le Mer des Canuts (the wall of silk workers) in Croix-Rousse. First painted in 1987, this massive mural gets a refresh and update every ten to twenty years. According to the on-site display, the mural is now on its third iteration.
Three other murals that we stopped to admire are: Thank You Monsieur Paul (dedicated to the famous Lyon chef Paul Bocuse, and found outside the food market that bears his name); Mur des Écrivains a/k/a Bibliothèque de la Cité (the wall of writers, or the city library); and, La Fresque des Lyonnais (depicting famous historical figures from Lyon over the centuries).
For more information on these and many other murals, Offbeat France has a great blog post on Lyon’s murals, complete with a Google map.
On our last weekend in Lyon great weather finally got us outside for an extended period of time. One afternoon we hopped on a water taxi, Vaporetto Lyon, at the Bellcour landing and rode to Confluence. The ride cost €5 per adult, more than twice as much as the metro but infinitely more enjoyable on a nice day.
Confluence strikes us as being an upscale, trendy, millennial neighborhood. It’s new, very modern, and named for the confluence of the Rhône and Saône Rivers. Several parks dot the walking trail along the Saône River, along with houseboats, bars, apartments, shops, and hotels.
We walked from the Confluence marina to the convergence point of the two rivers. That’s where we found the “Only Lyon” tourist sign, spray painted and all. It’s not a great sign and definitely not in a good location, but we took a picture of it.
Nearby is the Musée des Confluences, a natural history museum. We had zero interest in the museum, but it is free to go in and walk around the upper observation levels. We might have entered, but there are security and metal detectors at the entrance. It did not take long for us to decide that we were too uninterested to go through security just to get into the building.
That night, our last in Lyon, we decided it was time to get a pizza. Italian restaurants are everywhere in Europe. As Stephanie observed, they’re kind of like Mexican restaurants in the United States. There is one on every block and all have similar names.
Next to our Airbnb is La Stazione, at Italian restaurant which is highly rated online (4.7 stars). The people who gave that place good reviews should be blacklisted. The pizza was the worst, period. If you ever wondered whether there is a restaurant anywhere in the world that serves worse pizza than what you got in your high school cafeteria, look no further.
At least it was relatively inexpensive and, just barely, tolerable enough to eat (with healthy doses of salt, pepper, and olive oil added on). I mean, this pizza was so bad not even a few beers could save it.
After nearly three months in France it is finally time to return home, starting with a flight to London before heading to Dallas and finally Memphis.
The easiest and most convenient way to reach Lyon–Saint-Exupéry Airport (LYS) from the city (presumably for a flight, but perhaps to catch a high-speed TGV train), is via Rhônexpress, a dedicated tram running to and from Lyon Part Dieu and the airport, every 15 minutes at most hours of the day (the full schedule is on the website or app). It’s about a thirty minute ride each way.
A one way ticket costs €15.20 online, purchased online or through an Android app (sorry iPhone users). Round trip tickets cost €26.70. A ticket is good for a year; it is not booked by date and time. You get a slight discount by purchasing well in advance. If you forget to purchase a ticket in advance, you can buy one from the ticket machine at the platform, but a €4 surcharge will be added.
It is possible to take the metro to the airport for a cool €2, but it is a bit convoluted and time consuming, involving Metro Line A, a tram to Meyzieu, and finally a bus to the airport. I’m guessing this would take close to an hour and, for us, at least three transfers. Some things are not worth it.
Uber was the final option we considered. Depending on the time of day and type of vehicle, prices from the center of town range from €50 to €80, plus a tip. Nope. This might be a good option if you have three or more travelers, or have multiple and/or large suitcases, but not for two with carry-on luggage only. As best we could determine taxis cost about the same.
On the way to the airport, Stephanie stopped and gave our leftover change (a whole 10 cents, consisting of five 2 cent coins) to some lady sitting on the ground begging for money outside the train station. The beggar must have been insulted, because she promptly picked up the coins and threw them back at Stephanie. We had a good laugh about it on the way out of town.
Garrett and Stephanie
P.S. Speaking of leaving town, I wasn’t going to write this up, but getting home was one disaster after another. We flew from Lyon to London on British Airways and spent the night at the Hyatt Place London Heathrow. Our alarm went off Tuesday morning at 7:00 AM local time, which is 1:00 AM in Dallas.
We had a short bus ride and walk to Heathrow Terminal 3. We checked in with American Airlines online, skipped the counter, and went straight to security. Several employees were advising travelers to be careful with their liquids, as security is very strict about liquids. Stephanie fretted quite a bit because she travels with a lot of liquids. In fact, I had to take several of hers to ger her under the limit.
So it was only fitting that I was the idiot that forgot to remove my liquids from my backpack. Getting through security took us 30 minutes rather than 15 minutes. Thankfully my rookie mistake did not cause a longer delay.
We spend the next few hours in a Priority Pass lounge, which actually had pretty decent food and drink options. Boarding for our flight to Dallas began shortly after 11:00 AM. We were able to check our carry on bags for free at the gate, after confirming that we could pick up our bags in Dallas and actually carry them onto our second flight to Memphis. We’re really not keen on having our suitcases floating around an airport during layovers.
So far, so good. This is when the fun begins.
After boarding, our plane pulled away from the gate and promptly sat on the runway for an hour. Not a great way to start at 10 hour flight. Most of the delay was made up while flying, as we touched down at DFW airport at 4:15 PM, not long after our scheduled arrival.
Our snack on the flight was a “Meat Feast Folded Pizza” from Monty’s Bakehouse. It was better than our pizza at La Stazione.
After landing in Dallas the plane promptly came to a stop on the tarmac. The captain reported that our assigned gate was occupied by another plane, but would be available soon. Okay. Every thirty minutes – for the next three hours – the captain reported the exact same message. You could tell he was becoming quite exasperated and frustrated.
Over three hours later, around 7:30 PM, the captain announced that the flight crew was almost at its FAA flight time limitation and, as such, getting our plane to a gate was now a full blown emergency for DFW management.
It did not take long for the passengers to learn that DFW closed that morning because of severe storms. Only later did we find out that DFW did not resume operations until 4:30 PM, after we landed. One article that we pulled up online reported that nearly 600 flights going in or out of DFW were cancelled and over 900 were delayed.
Because our flight to Memphis that night was delayed, the extra time on the tarmac was more of a nuisance than a problem. Until about an hour elapsed and our flight was cancelled. American Airlines suggested we rebook a flight to Memphis on late Wednesday night or Thursday. While I rebooked our flight for the next night, Stephanie reserved a rental car with Budget as a backup plan.
At 7:45 PM we were finally at a gate and getting off the plane. Getting through customs was a breeze. An hour later we had our luggage. By this time we decided to drive to Memphis. The airport was packed with stranded travelers. Staying was not an option. DFW was a disaster.
We made it to the rental car building at about 9:00 PM, just in time to get in a very long line at Budget. At 10:30 PM we finally had a car, and left DFW. Dinner options were few and far between. Basically it was McDonald’s or Taco Bell, and since we ate McDonald’s twice in London, it was Taco Bell in Dallas.
At dinner we tried to find a hotel, particularly along I-30 on the east side of Dallas. Damn near every hotel in the Dallas-Fort Worth area was sold out, presumably with stranded travelers. We starting driving east towards Memphis. About two hours later, in Sulphur Springs, Texas, we found a Hampton Inn with a vacancy.
At 1:00 AM in Dallas (7:00 AM in London), our twenty-four hour travel day was finally over.
You’d think a six hour drive to Memphis the next day would be uneventful, but it wasn’t. Some local cop just south of Little Rock, Arkansas pulled Stephanie over for following too closely. After complimenting our choice of lunch venues (we had cups from Popeye’s in the car), the cop made it very clear that he had no intention of writing Stephanie a ticket. That was a good start.
So why did she get pulled over? The cop candidly admitted that the police were trying to step up their presence on the interstate. He invited us to a dog and pony show where we got to stand on the side of the interstate and he got to search our car. Just to demonstrate to passing cars that the police were watching. After thirty minutes Stephanie was let go with a warning.
The cop followed behind as Stephanie pulled back onto the interstate. Before we had traveled a mile, the cop pulled over another car for who knows what reason.
If there is a silver lining to this whole episode, it is that our travel insurance with Allianz paid for our hotel, rental car, gas, and meals per trip delay coverage.
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