12 Days In The South Of France: Days 1-4

We have been to Paris once before for a few days, but exploring the rest of France was high on my bucket list. Thanks to the flexibility that FIRE affords, we were able to jump on a ticket sale and ended up paying just over $600 per Paris/ NY round-trip ticket in July!

We scheduled 12 days in total to go around the French Alps region, the lavender fields of Provence, and the Loire Valley.

Another movie marathon kicks off the trip

As I tend to do in long flights (witness my 8-movie marathon going to the Philippines and my 7-movie marathon on the return flight), I take full advantage of the seat-back screens. We took an evening flight from NY, but with the time change (France is six hours ahead), we arrived first thing in the morning. This meant I should have been sleeping on the flight, but instead I watched three movies.

I was in the mood for light and funny so took in three comedies:

Fighting With My Family is based on a true story about a family of wrestlers (yes, that wrestling, and Dwayne Johnson appears as himself) from a small town in England. I LOVED this movie, and I don’t care for wrestling. It’s more about the family than the wrestling, though the footage of the wrestling training camp made me feel like I was getting a workout too.

Isn’t It Romantic is fun enough for an airplane ride, and it has a Hemsworth (apparently it was Liam based on the credits, but I can never tell the two brothers apart). That’s about all I remember of the film.

Dumbo was recently remade from the animated version to live action. I loved the live action Jungle Book, and I hadn’t seen the original animated movie. So, I was doubly excited for Dumbo, where I was already a fan of the original, and Colin Farrell stars. Unfortunately, it was just OK, even with Colin Farrell in it and Michael Keaton hamming it up as the evil circus owner.

First stop: an amazing view of the capital of the French Alps

Our first stop on this trip is Lyon, the capital city of the French Alps region. Scott reserved an amazing AirBNB with a view of the city.

Lyon has several amazing church structures, and we could see the Basilica of Notre-Dame de Fourviere from our balcony. (Next to the basilica, you can see the Metallic Tower of Fourviere, which resembles the Eiffel Tower and is the highest point in Lyon:

Being so high up and having a view of the east meant we could watch the sun rise over the city:

We also were lucky enough to catch a partial lunar eclipse one night and have a full view of the moon rise the next night. The sky was so clear that the moon appeared red!

However, living so high up meant that we had a long way down whenever we wanted to go into town. We stayed close to the Old City part of Lyon, a major tourist attraction. On our first night, we experimented walking down the steep cobblestone streets to get to the Old City.

It was difficult but once you got there, you were treated to easily accessible places to walk by the rivers. Lyon has two rivers running through it – the Saone, which was closest to us, and the Rhone, which was a few blocks further. There were several bridges where you could walk across:

We spent one day walking through the Old City. We saw some of Lyon’s amazing murals, including one that took up an entire four-story apartment and featured 31 famous French citizens, such as Antonie de Saint-Exupery, painted alongside his most famous character, The Little Prince:

We also saw The Flower Tree, a massive, technicolor sculpture created by Korean artist, Jeong-Hwa Choi:

We searched for the secret passageways. Known as the Traboules of Lyon, these are unadvertised shortcuts in the Old City that you can use to pass from one street to the next. Originally used by the silk trade to quickly distribute their products, many have been closed off and are now part of residential buildings. But we still discovered one:

Lyon is the foodie capital of the foodie capital of the world

It turns out that Lyon is famous for its food, and given that France itself is famous for its food, we had high expectations. We’re not foodies or wine lovers, so I’m sure we missed the trendier places. But we loved what we did eat:

Late night crepes at Kumao, a café tucked into a side street near the Old City

Cookies at a pastry shop when we crossed into the Rhone side

Our favorite meal was dinner at an outdoor café. I had a delicious cream pasta dish with smoked salmon

Sting plays Lyon and I meet the Queen (from Alien)

While dining at that outdoor café, we noticed a long line snaking all the way up the hilly street. It turns out that Sting was in town, playing a concert at the Ancient Theatre of Fourviere, an outdoor theater on a hill that is the remains of a Roman theatre from 15 BC!

We didn’t get to see Sting, but we did stumble into the Museum of Miniatures and Movies, which featured props and mini sets from many famous movies. There were several selections from the Alien movies, which is one of my all-time favorite science fiction movie franchises. Of course, I took full advantage and posed with the Queen Alien:

There were many fun props, including the umbrella from Mary Poppins!

Harry Potter memorabilia

Even the monster from Mimic (another science fiction franchise I highly recommend!)

We enjoyed our favorite pastimes but in France!

Not only did I get my Alien fix, but I got to see one of the largest flea markets in France! Les Puces du Canal runs three times per week — Thursday, Saturday and Sunday — and features up to 400 vendors. Though we were checking out of our AirBNB on Thursday, the flea market opens at 7a so we had time to visit!

I didn’t buy anything, though I discovered there was a children’s book series with a title character named Caroline. Seeing that the Amazon collection of six is going for $4,500, I probably should have bought the two I saw for 4 Euro each.

We also had time for a nature walk at one of the main parks in Lyon, Parc de la Tete d’Or, which features a free zoo and botanical garden. Both activities were just the right size, even surprisingly big given that they were free.

There were flowers of all kinds and colors, though my favorite was the simple white, though lush magnolia:

There was a small group of magnolia trees and luckily many were still in bloom.

The highlight of the zoo was the new baby monkey, born in November:

There was also a group of giraffes, a couple of striking pelicans, flamingos (who get their pink color from eating shrimp!) and a sleeping red panda. It was a hot day so the lion, gorilla and other zoo regulars were indoors.

Off to Provence and the lavender fields

After three and a half days in Lyon, we headed to our next stop, Aix-en-Provence, to catch lavender and sunflower fields in full bloom. More about our time in Provence in the next blog post!