First stop of the day is back to the Paul Smith store. We’d seen some fun stuff there, and after thinking about it a night, decided to act on it. As I was finishing my purchase, the owner disappeared around to the back room, came out with something in his hands and cut off the price tags.

They were bracelets. One for Christine, which coordinated with the necklace she’d purchased.

And one for me, to go with the necklace I’d bought. I held up my hand to show the bracelet, and he clasped it. Very charming, these French.

After stashing them back at the room, we walked down to Perrache Metro/Gare to head out for the day. There was a demonstration of apprentices. Many orange-helmeted guys in groups of 4 or 5 busy cutting out the same shape, bending their set of rebar in the same curve, busy hammering. And of course, one official guy overseeing each group. Quite a display.

We took the Metro red line to City Hall, then transferred to the yellow, which truthfully was like an underground funicular. We could feel the steepness of the climb in the tilt of the train car. We were heading up Croix-Rousse, an ancient hill of this city, established in Roman times. We paused to get our bearings at the top, and behind Christine was. . .

. . . this fabulous group of French ladies.
We keep noticing the style, which seems to be DNA-coded in the women here. A scarf casually rolled, the shoes perfectly matched, the jacket just so. Of course there are others without that, but we seem to agree that there is a predominance of good fashion and classic style sense that doesn’t seem to exist on a national level in the United States.

A street fair was set up, with La Petite Serene sign atop one of the fairway games. It reminded me of my granddaughters.

The previous few days, Christine kept saying, there’s this drink that Jeremy told me to get. And we’d try this one, or this one. But today–we found it. Agrum. I took a photo so we could remember. We paused in this sliver of a park atop Croix-Rousse to enjoy the view of the neighboring hill, where the Notre Dame du Fourviere basilica is sited.

Why did we head up here? To see the traboules, the stairways and passageways where the silk workers from earlier days passed from one factory to the next, always staying out of the rain. It’s a World Heritage site collectively.

One of the more famous. It’s on all the brochures.

Sometimes we’d head through small courtyards on our trek. I couldn’t resist photographing Christine against this perfectly pinky-beige wall.

This stairway was locked, so I looked up and caught the symmetry.

I saw this doorway last time: CSL. I pointed it out to Christine and she said: Cynthia Sessions Lippincott! Yep. I thought so too.

Passage Thiaffiat leads down from double stairs, through a small narrow courtyard. We paused here to window shop (okay, okay, I bought some perfectly quirky earrings with Eiffel towers dangling from a small jewel) and in front of our store as we stepped out, a lady in turquoise stockings was comforting a weeping friend. She quickly stepped across the courtyard to usher her friend into another storefront.

We continue on, through Moire courtyard–yes, the man who developed the process did it here. I like the cart paths on the side of the stairs.

Our eventual destination is Place des Terraux. This fountain (photo taken from a museum window) was designed by the same man who designed our Statue of Liberty. Facing this fountain is the Beaux Arts museum, housed in the 17th-century Palais St-Pierre, a former Benedictine convent for the daughters of the nobility.

The museum is a square, with a large courtyard in the center. This is a view of one of the “hallways” on the lower floor, just to my right as I entered (but before we were in the courtyard).

We were tired, so the first stop was the terrace. This little refreshment stop was typically French, with a long wait for the waiter (is that why they call them that?). He took our order, another long wait. I had orange juice, and Christine had lemon juice. They brought me water and sugar (it needed the sugar!) and I was supposed to dilute the juice with the water to make an orangeade. I told Christine that I was from Southern California and we don’t dilute our orange juice there. I ended up doing it, not only to be “with it,” but also because I needed some hydration. Another long wait for the check. We gave up and went inside and paid.

A painting in the Musee des Beaux Arts, detailing virtures and
vices. Check out the devil blowing red smoke in the lady’s ear on the right, as well as the anger box (to the right of that), with a thorny border.

A window to a stairwell.

A lower salon with beautiful stone statues alongside the windows.
We went home, tired from the day. Shopping and sightseeing is hard work. We checked email and talked until Dave came home and off we went to Momento, a restaurant we’d found on our last trip. The owner experiments a lot, and most dishes are successful; some are not, but it’s always an adventure.

Salmon atop toast and greens–Dave’s appetizer. A winner.

Three tastes: mushroom soup (good), panna cotta with mushroom and dried, cured beef (wierd), and fresh greens.

A roasted chicken leg with swirled pancetta and mashed potatoes. One of the interesting things to notice is the use of drizzled sauces and chopped garnishes to make the presentation really interesting.

Fig cake. It was delicious, but the lunch version was superior.

Good night.