I spent my second full day in Lyon in the city’s main garden/ public space.
Parc de la Tête d’Or is absolutely astonishing, especially when you see in ideal conditions as I did. You walk through grand black and gold gates and into a magical green kingdom with a beautiful clear blue lake and children laughing. It’s wonderful. I spent hours wandering through the jardin botanique, jardin zoologique, and the big green fields filled with French with baguettes. Sunday morning picnics seem to be a tradition in Lyon. The park was filled with joggers, bikers, roller skaters and strollers (people who stroll, but there were also the baby-holding variety.) The sun was warm and the breeze was cool, a perfect Sunday morning in the park. One of the delights of the park for me was a little exhibit on urban bees by a running path, with several hives in full swing. I love watching bees buzz around completely busy and focused, and seeing them sparks good memories from my time as a beekeeper at Park. I didn’t stay for too long because I didn’t have an epi-pen with me and it’s best to be careful with allergies. It is hard to imagine anything more pleasant than sitting in the warm sun in a beautiful garden in the south of France with nothing pressing on your time.
The garden took up most of my day, but I wanted to see the museum that my father had recommended, so I started that walk. I couldn’t find the museum as there are a few schools with similar names in the area, and I was starting to get tired from the 8 miles I had already walked that day so I headed back to my hostel.
I spent my third full day in Lyon catching up on the logistics of backpack living and as a rest day. That meant doing laundry, which was a bewildering process as I had no sense of the vocabulary involved in a French self-service coin-op laundry, but I made it work. The walk to the “laverie” also gave me a chance to explore a little more of the neighborhood around my hostel. Sitting in the chair of a laundromat for a couple hours wasn’t my first choice of a way to spend an afternoon, but it was peaceful and I got to listen to my music.