LYON 2.0

 Nice easy boarding, bit of lunch, afternoon kip, set us for day 2. Not so, over indulged with cheese soufflé starter, coq au vin followed by rum baba but eaten too late to avoid the 1:30am heartburn. Combine that with further disrupted sleep, lost time change hour and early tour start - now exhausted and couped. Have to recoup with another afternoon snooze.

Tour was good, went firstly to the food market hall. Lyon is apparently famous for it's food, I really only know the potatoes. Paul Bocuse is the chef that made the food scene happen. 50 years with 3 Michelin stars - is that good? Anyway, he is immortalised on the buildings.

We had a food tasting showcasing local products. You have to be careful though, we managed to tack onto a second group by mistake, so 2 lots of wine, cheese, sausage & pork pie, all by 9:30am. Ces't la vie.

The cold & wind has been pretty brutal here especially as we didn't plan for it. We went up to the basilica around 10:30 which is situated on top of a high hill, you had to find a wind sheltered spot in the sun to be comfortable. Very busy, impossible to get inside. There is a very large marathon going with 30 thousand extra people in the centre.

That's our hotel in the middle. The locals call them the rubber, the crayon & the charcoal.

We had a wander around the old town on the banks of the Rhone. It is tightly packed, narrow roads & alleys with lots of little restaurants. As the area developed people took to building big in their back gardens, some 4-5 floors high and filling all the space between one street & the next. The entry to these blocks is through narrow alleys next to the original houses, then up spiral staircases. The houses are old & protected, so no lifts. You have to be young and fit to live in this district to climb the winding stairs up to your apartment. Being young to live here and also well off, as it's pricey, means that this district is party central as well. The alleys into these areas are blocked by secure doors & largely inaccessible to the public. Difficult to find the public ones if you don't have a guide.