Today is our first day waking up in Lyon. Our plan this morning is to take a walk and explore Presque-Ile. Presque-Ile is the piece of land that lies between the Rhône and Saône rivers as they run in parallel through Lyon. But first – déjeuner! (Breakfast).
Our hotel has a breakfast room, and breakfast is included in the bill, so we went down to check it out. It wasn’t anything fancy, but it was nice, and the usual array of croissants, meats, cheeses, cereals, etc. was laid out.
Staying in apartments in Paris and Dijon was great, but I have to admit that it’s pretty nice just to go down a couple of floors and partake of the goodies, as opposed to heading outside to make a foraging run.
Let’s Take a Walk
We started our walk after breakfast, heading north from the hotel.
We hadn’t gone far when we came to a big square called “Place des Jacobins.” Twelve streets come together at this point, where there’s a huge statue and Parisian-looking buildings on all sides. This part of Lyon looks just like Paris.
Place des Jacobins has been here almost 500 years. It gets its name from a Jacobin monastery that used to be here. In France, the religious monks who are called “Dominicans” everywhere else in the world are called “Jacobins”. There must have been a lot of Dominican monks and friars walking around this area back in the day.
We moved on past Place des Jacobins and came to a big, pedestrian-only street lined with trees. We had reached “Rue de la Republique.” It’s one of the main shopping streets in this area. It’s a big street lined with stores and places to eat. We turned to walk down Rue de la Republic for awhile, still heading north, away from the hotel.
Place des Cordeliers
Pretty soon we came to another square. This one was Place des Cordeliers. (Pronounced, “kor-del-yay”). It’s named for a Franciscan church and convent that’s been at this location since the year 1220. That’s going pretty far back, eh?
“Cordeliers” is what they called Franciscan monks here because they wore knotted ropes around their waists, and a “rope” in french is a “corde”, so you can see the connection there. Now, you may wonder why they just didn’t call them “Franciscans”? It’s for the same reason they call Dominicans “Jacobins” instead of Dominicans. Calling Dominicans “Dominicans” and Franciscans “Franciscans” would just be too easy! Anyway, let’s move on…
From Place des Cordeliers, we turned east and walked two blocks to the Rhône river. There’s a busy street here called “Quay Jean Moulin.” It’s another big street lined with trees, except this one runs alongside the river. I remember seeing the bicyclists in the Tour de France going down this stretch of road when they went through Lyon. We turned up Quay Jean Moulin and walked along the river, heading north again.
Quay Jean Moulin
Who was Jean Moulin? He is one of the most respected hero’s in French history. During World War II, he was assigned the task of uniting the various factions of the French underground. Up until Jean Moulin came along, there were lots of French resistance fighters, especially in the area around Lyon, but they consisted of local groups that mostly did their own thing. Getting them organized together would make them much more effective.
Quite an assignment, eh? It was one that was extremely difficult and fraught with danger, to say the least. We’ll come back to Jean Moulin a little later. But for now, we need to get a move on.
We walked up Quay Jean Moulin for a ways, but then started thinking that we’d better start heading back towards the hotel. We were approaching the end of the Presque-Ile district and the beginning of the district called “Croix Rousse.” (It means “rust-colored cross”). Heading into the Croix Rousse neighborhood would be another whole walk just by itself.
We decided to find a place to have a coffee and maybe a little snack, then turn around and head back toward the hotel. We were at another large open area — Place Louis Pradel. You can see it on the map if you have your magnifiers handy. Louis Pradel was the mayor of Lyon for enough years to have this place named after him.
We found a café where we could order espresso’s, sit at a little table outside, and enjoy the view. We’d had been a pretty good walk. Now, we get our reward before making the trek back to the hotel.
To be continued…
