As we made our way out of Avignon, we stopped by their old roman archway and took pictures while I called my friend from Lyon who was giving us a place to stay for the night.
We stopped in Montelimar, a place made famous for the origin of Nougat. So we had to check out their Nougat factory. You can watch it being made and packaged. We bought a couple of flavors for the road and as a gift for our friends in Lyon.
I was reading a book to my mom in the car but after a couple of hours I looked up and noticed that we were driving by a river and I can't really explain what was so familiar, because we weren't really in the city yet; I had never been on that road but there was something about the buildings and the river that just screamed LYON to me. I perked up and said "are we almost there? I can already tell!"
There was no more reading after that. I was too excited when I started recognizing things: the aquarium I visited on a preparation-day, a bridge, a building, the large cathedral on top of the hill. I was home.
We drove into the center of town to go to the Tourist office. We needed to get our city passes so we could take the public transportation around town. You cannot imagine how excited I was about that.
It took forever in line to get our passes. I don't even want to talk about the annoying old man who just kept going around in circles with his questions while every one is rolling their eyes waiting for him to be finished. He never did- after nearly 25 minutes someone else finally came out to start a new line.
Before we could explore the city we drove out to find my friends' house- the Lepores. It was a bit more complicated than we expected. There are two roads with a similar name and we went to the wrong one, but Roland was able to come and help us find the way- it wasn't far.
Amie and Roland moved into Lyon while I was serving there. She is American and he is French- his parents also live in Lyon. They have the most adorable children the world has ever seen and when we pulled up the kids came running out to greet us. I could finally pick them up! We had a lovely lunch with the whole family and I thoroughly enjoyed playing with the kids.
We took the bus after lunch to go into town and see the sights. I was overjoyed to walk around my town again. We visited Vieux Lyon (old town) and saw the Guignol museum, which I had not visited before, and we walked through a few of the passage-ways that make up the Lyon Labyrinth. Lyon was built on the production of silk and these passages were used to transport the silk from the factories without getting damaged from rain or snow. They are like tiny alleyways that go through the buildings from street to street, but they go under apartments and many of them are not publicly accessible because people still live in all the apartments. We also went to see the silk factory where they have machinery that is hundreds of years old and they still use it! We could watch the man at work making a striped red velvet. I had no clue how velvet was made and now I know and I must say it is pretty genius.
We hopped on the metro to go down to 'my part of town.' The Lumière Brothers museum is right in the neighborhood where I lived as a missionary. The Lumière Brothers invented the moving pictures- the creation of movies. The museum is in the enormous house that their father built. You should look it up- its a remarkable building.
Since we were so close we walked to see my apartment (which is now occupied by Elders and I hope they are taking good care of it). Just at the edge of our block corner is the boulangerie that we frequented often so I had to stop in and get a pastry.
Then we went a couple stops on the metro to stop by the institute. There were elders inside, teaching. I didn't really get to know the Institute director or his secretary but I still saw them often enough that when I went upstairs they did recognize me. It is really weird to think that I have been home for 16 months already. While I talked about who was still in town (most of the young adults are either on missions or in different cities) my parents found the photo albums that the missionary couple used to put together. There is a picture of me in one of the baptism pictures. I am so glad that we stopped by the insitute because I got to call Terencia, a young woman that worked with us all the time. She was working that night but I had to see her so I asked if we could meet up the next morning before my parents and I left town. We only had a little time to be in Lyon because we needed to drive up to Lausanne with many stops on the way. So even though our plan was to leave Lyon early, I HAD to see Terencia and she said it would be possible.
We left the institute and took the metro and funicular up to see the Cathedral and the Roman Ruins. We quickly popped into the Cathedral and took some pictures outside. We were outside when we heard the bells ring six and then we walked down to the ruins. The man in the tourist office had told me that they close at seven. But we got there and the gate was closed. The man in the tourist office forgot that the winter schedule started 3 days earlier so the ruins close at 6. Crap. I was really excited to show the ruins to my parents. It is a very impressive amphitheater. Actually, it is 2. And you can walk all over and around the ruins. My dad would have enjoyed it. Too bad.
We made plans with the Lepore family to meet up with us for dinner. We went to a restaurant in Vieux Lyon that I remembered. It was so much fun to be with the kids and the food was really good too.
After dinner we went home and chatted with the family and the kids presented us with some pictures and notes that they drew for us that afternoon. It was SO adorable. I'm going to miss them a ton.
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