Lyon Churches

So, as may be apparent, there's a lot of learning for me that doesn't happen until I sit down to write about the places I've visited. I'm not sure about the usefulness about most of this knowledge, though some of it is quite fun. Like, for instance, funicular. Without any context clues, I would assume that this had something to do with maybe fungus or maybe cuticles but t actually means "a cable railway in which a cable attached to a pair of tram-like vehicles on rails moves them up and down a steep slope; the ascending and descending vehicles counterbalance each other." (wikipedia again)

Which is precisely what I rode up to Notre Dame de Fourviere, a church on a hill that has the two oldest funicular lines in the world. Fourviere, by the by, is the site (maybe sight... oh English, how you continue to thwart my pretense of education and intelligence) of the Roman settlement that grew to be Lyon. Lyon, also by the by, has interesting history that you can read here. Anyway, Lyon picked the Virgin Mary as its patron saint (which is really is almost cheating to me- it's just one step below saying, "Are you sure we can't pick Jesus as our patron saint? I mean, He's the best, isn't He?") and you get the Basilica up on the hill the same time Sacre Coeur is being built it Paris, and for the same reasons.

I did like the church, especially its mosaics.

The main church upstairs,

the one that sits in the shadow of a huge statue of Mary,

Really, sometimes I think the French are diverting my attention. Like, "Here, be distracted by a HUGE STATUE OF MARY."

 is much more formal than the smaller chapel downstairs

which hosts many different statues of the Virgin Mary and her first baby boy. I could talk again about the way the church and the world in general is connected, but I think I'm just going to put up a couple of pictures and hope that you like them as well as I did.

Down the hill is the cathedral of the city which is overshadowed physically and in popularity by the basilica because, well, because the basilica is on a hill and the cathedral is not. It's still significant though- it was founded by Saint Pothinus and Saint Irenaeus and Saint Irenaeus is one of the four doctors of the western church often represented in sacred architecture. Also, it was made the primary church in Gaul, which is what France was called by the Romans and people like the pope who talked like the Romans even four hundred years after the Western Roman empire fell. I think. Ugh, history face palm!

It struck me as an empty church- not much decoration at all, which threw me off guard. I'm used to every free space on the wall filled with carvings representing this saint or depicting that biblical story.

 It was actually a bit of a relief to find a quiet church with a tiny crowd. I took pictures of the choir stalls, because I just can't get away from them,

and of the astrological clock, from the 14th century.

Here's a video of it ringing which seems like it would be lame at the beginning but actually turns out to be kinda cool.

And that's about all I can muster for these churches. Notre Dame de Fourviere has Byzantine aspects and reminded me quite a bit of Notre Dame de la Guarde and the cathedral is another one of those Gothic churches with twists- you've got Romanesque aspects in the choir and in the apse.

See? Gothic peaks up top and Romanesque curves below. 

There are all sorts of fun stories associated with any church- in this case, if you've got the time and the googling skills, you can learn about the marriage of King Henry IV of France to Marie de Medici of the Medici family of Florence who were particularly powerful (but the only reason I know about them is because Galileo initially names the moons of Jupiter after his patron Count Medici). Nothing here blew me away, which I feel quite guilty about. I mean, ostensibly, the only thing to make Sacre Coeur or Notre Dame more interesting is the fact that they're in Paris. But really, despite the parallels, I was much more excited for the churches in Paris. And Lyon is an interesting step on the ladder of my European journey, but that's all.

Lyon (Or, Addie Jo and Janie's Adventure Into Lyon's City Hall)

It's amazing how being in Europe pulls people out of the woodwork that you hadn't expected to see. And for all the negative hype and I've passed along about Facebook and the internet in general, it does create some pretty awesome happenstance meetings.

Take seeing Janie in Lyon for example.

I had Lyon on my list just to give me a place to be for a few days during a longer stay in Avignon, kind of a minor scene in front of a new landscape before heading on to the explosion of epicness that would be Paris. Janie, who I think I rode the bus with when she was a freshman and I was a sophomore at Carolina, but who had transferred to State the year after, had seen my note with my itinerary on Facebook and proposed meeting up. Delighted again to see someone new and familiar, I agreed.

Janie met me at the McDonald's near my hotel that had become like a second home to me, due to the free wi-fi. (As an aside, I feel absolutely ridiculous asking about wi-fi in English. How do you think I fared asking about it in continental Europe, where they pronounce it wee-fee? Answer- I never asked about it. Oh embarassment. How you infiltrate my life with difficulty.) It was here, you may recall, that I laid out my resolve to catch the blog up to present times. I'm still a country and several churches behind, but the gap is closing.

Anyway, Janie and I met at McDonald's and from there we took the metro and then the tram up to Notre Dame de Fourviere, another church on a hill.

 We made our way back down the hill to the cathedral in Lyon, with its astrological clock.

 Finally, we went over to the opera, taking pictures of the muses standing over the entrance.

Leaving off Urania, of course, because the muse of astronomy has an unfortunate name and little to do with opera.

Janie had been in the town hall on a visit with her study abroad program but didn't know if we should step inside this time without a guide. A female guard stood outside the gate. After a few moments of debate, we were encouraged to enter by the exit of a woman with shopping bags. We ducked into the gate while the guard was distracted, just for good measure.

After taking a few pictures of a rather remarkable fountain,

we made the braver decision to walk inside the hall. The worst that could happen is that they tell us to leave, we reasoned. All the same, we peered around corners before entering rooms and ran lightly across creaking wooden floors when we heard anyone approach. Losing our resolve and having seen all we wanted to see, we escaped unscathed, the only evidence of our incursion a few pictures on my camera.

Quite exciting pictures, of course.

The next day we met for lunch over by the university, a conglomeration of buildings that would form the perfect setting for a post-apocalyptic drama, as Janie pointed out. We sat outside a pizza place and talked about being physics students, a strangely comforting topic for me. We walked over to a gas station after lunch to get some wonderful lemon tart and then I headed back to my section of town, garnering a parting gift- a lanyard from CERN that I am beyond excited about. Leave it to two American science majors to meet in France and exchange gifts from a particle accelerator in Switzerland.

Another rainy day and delayed train later and I left Lyon behind me, scrolling fondly through my pictures of flower trees

 and lions before arriving at the city of lights, Paris.