Our Cultural Weekend in Lyon

 One very hungover Saturday myself and my flatmate decided to venture into our local town for an evening of culture, which meant actually getting a place to stay, rather than our usual stalwart of waiting for the first Sunday morning train... On arrival we made our way to Cool&Beds hostel, a great, cheap and clean place I've stayed at before, north of Vieux Lyon right on the bank of the Saône. Unfortunately they had no spaces left (!) so slightly disgruntled at our unnecessary detour, we turned back south and tried the Auberge on the top of the hill (halfway between Cathédrale St Jean and Fourvière) joking that if they had no spaces here we'd have to roll back down. Luckily for us they did, at only €19-something each for a place in a 8-bed dorm. I had to pay €7 extra to sign up for a hostel membership card thing, but I'm hoping this will come in handy again!

View from the hostel. Forgive the phonecam quality!

Spotted on the walk

After claiming our room and leaving our overnight bags we headed to Place Bellecour for the tourist information office to find out what plays were on that evening. There was a huge choice but we settled on 'Georges Dandin' by Molière in Acte 2 theatre. We weren't quite sure where to find it, so phoned up in advance, only to be led back to the same address we had visited on our first, unsuccessful hostel search! It's a small Lyon. 

It was a cute little attic theatre with one stage and maybe 100 seats (? - I'm terrible at estimates) all at one level and a pop-up bar with all drinks at €2! Such a shame we were so hungover... The play itself was very good: for us, mainly an exercise in language comprehension but we followed almost everything, even the humour which, despite the play being of Shakespearean era, was brilliantly intact. The ending felt a little abrupt, but who am I to question the plot-workings of a genius? 

From here we went to The Wallace, a great Scottish pub (most pub-like 'pub' I've seen out of Britain!) towards Vieux Lyon. They serve fish and chips, and about a million different type of whiskey; I'll definitely be returning another time when I'm more hungry and in the mood for a drink!

In the morning the hostel needed us out by 10am so after a generous breakfast we headed back out into town. With nothing much else to do (the whole of France is like a ghost-town on Sundays) we went to see 'Django Unchained' in the original version - meaning subtitled, not dubbed (hallelujah!) - in Pathé Bellecour. It was admittedly a little early in the morning for all that violence, but it's a fantastic film: typically Tarantino, but not in a predictable way.

Afterwards we grabbed lunch in Quick (like a continental McDonalds - almost the only place open on Sundays) then headed to the Gadagne museum in Vieux Lyon, for me a revisit of their great Guignol collection. Finally, back to Bourg for a well-needed early night!

I can't remember if I've already shared this
puppet on this blog. But it's cute so I don't care.