Swimming in Lyon!

On Monday morning I had a very clear idea of what I wanted to do! In the morning, le Musée des Beaux-Arts and then I would go swimming!

I exchanged a few messages with Ben, the priest at the Anglican church and at one point in the day, we decided that I should meet the sound guy, Jerry, at the church on Tuesday morning before I checked out of the hotel and headed for Part Dieu station.

I have visited the museum a couple of times before but this is the first time I have taken a real camera, my Nikon J1. By far the best part of the museum is the chapel which is full of amazing and beautiful sculpture.

I have added one or two of my favourites here.

Boucher: Aux Champs
This is by far my favourite because I describe it as a little bit "Harry Potter", as though the young girl is coming out of the stone, having been captured there for many centuries!

Rodin: Paolo et Francesca (from Dante's Inferno)
 

Maillol: La Montage

After wandering around the chapel for a long time, I then went up to the second floor (Floor 0 is the ground floor in France and Spain for those of you who are used to the ground floor being 1!) I skipped Antiquities because I had been there before and headed for art in the 19th and 20th Century. There, I found paintings by Renoir and Dégas and many other great artists of late 19th and early 20th Century.

I stopped for a coffee on the terrace and continued on to the modern art section but the selection was not brilliant. Maybe the Pompidou Centre has nicked all the best pictures!

After visiting the museum, I bough a sandwich and iced tea in Monoprix and went back to the square close to the hotel for my lunch. Next stop was the swimming pool so I didn't want to eat too much. 

After swimming, I arranged to get in contact with Ben at the church to arrange a meeting for Tuesday and, after an exchange of messages, we fixed a time of 9am for me to meet Jerry, the sound guy, at the church.

On the way back from the pool, I discovered a narrow street full of restaurants close to my hotel and the prices seemed quite reasonable so I decided to go back there.


At around 6.30pm I had a beer and made the mistake of ordering a large glass of Leffe. It was very expensive, €6.80, and after I had drunk about half of the glass, it started doing strange things to my head. It had alcohol, sure. But I should know better with this beer, the same thing has happened with Leffe before. So I left the rest of it!

 Here is the street where I had my evening meal.

I had half a bottle of wine and it was about €8 which is not too bad for here! The meal was a duck steak with a generous salad and chips.

And after that, I went back to the hotel, just a short walk away.