Lyon

I woke up this morning with some ideas but, as usual, little set in stone. Breakfast and the view from the hostel kept my attention for a bit, and eventually I walked down the hill and over the Saône to Place Bellecour, billed as "Europe's largest completely clear public square". Basically this means that Lyon has the biggest public square filled only with sand. I kept walking, over the Rhône to what looks like a recently built riverbank area. There were two bowls for skaters, lots of stairs, shallow running water alongside the river, etc. Just North of the bridge I crossed was one of Lyon's two farmers markets. I'm thinking I'll get lunch there tomorrow, bananas are about two euros a kilo.

Today I got lunch near the main metro entrance on the East side of the Rhône. There were three kebab shops next to each other, all with the same prices, so I just picked the one with a guy that looked happy. I didn't know you could have "kebabs" without the "shish", but it's a lot like a gyro.

From the kebab shop I took the metro to the other market, which was a bit smaller and starting to close. The Lumière museum was just across the street, which is what I really wanted to see. The Lumière brothers were the guys who basically invented cinematography in the form we know now. The museum was dedicated to their ideas and accomplishments, and had plenty of replicas, models and artifacts. Plus it was located in their super cool Art Nouveau home. I'm not really a cinematographer, but it felt like a pilgrimage anyway considering the leap they made in time-based media and experimental art.

From the Lumière Museum I went to the big park in the Northern part of Lyon, which has a huge lake with little islands you can get to via underground passageways. I heard some singing coming from the edge of the park and happened upon a African lady in very African clothes who gave me tracts in French. I could see the Musée d'Art Contemporain from here, which I'd heard about earlier, so I headed in that direction. The first floor had an exhibit called "Freak Show", with lots of strange objects commissioned from a number of artists: 10 feet tall rain boots, a brush with hair coming out instead of bristles, an acoustic guitar with a square body, a chair that looked like it was just about to tip over, etc. My favorite was the two cubes in the corner that were attached to opposite walls but suspended in mid air next to each other, presumably magnetically attracted. I wasn't sure it was worth five euros, but the second floor, an Erwin Wurm exhibition, redeemed it for me. His video work isn't so great (unless it's in the context of an installation, like the fat house), and pieces like "Thinking About Philosophers" are more fun to think about than view; his photography, "one minute sculptures" and "interactive sculptures" were my favorite. Of the "interactive sculptures", one instructs you to sit on the ground with your legs forward and think about Spinoza. Another asks you to hold a Pepsi can between your chest and chin. I like that his work is really simple and silly but still asks "bigger questions" about the boundaries of different media.

From the museum I took the bus, subway, and tram to the top of the main mountain in the older part of Lyon. It was starting to rain hard so I just got a quick look of the cathedral and the amazing view before rushing back down the hill and up on the other tram to the hostel.

At the hostel I waited for the rain to let up so I could get dinner. As I was walking out, a girl stopped me because she noticed my RPI shirt. We both happened to know the same person at RPI, so we talked for a bit and she showed me a great place that did a sandwich, drink and dessert for five euros. I also got a crepe from a guy making them on the street, which I'd wanted to do for a while.

Back at the hostel we sat around a table with some of her friends, but she was mostly ignoring the other conversations and just talking to me. She was coming from a small town, and going to community college because she wanted to stay with her family. No one believed that she'd be able to travel Europe for a month — much less by herself. It was a little rough at first, but now she's scared to go back. She feels like she's changed so much, and if she goes back people will put her in an old box.

Paris

There isn't much to say about the high-speed train from Brussels to Paris other than "it's really fast". That and I met two business and agriculture students from Uzbekistan named Nuri and Share (I'm probably transliterating their names wrong).

Paris is another place like New York City or London that hosts a variety of different cultures and languages and makes me wonder: what makes a city a city? If the definition of a city has anything to do with the characteristics of the people who live there, these melting pot places make me think there will come a day when communication and travel will be so ubiquitous we stop thinking about "cities" and group people and space in other terms.

The cheapest hostel I could find that was still close to a metro stop was a block and a half from the Louvre. In a strange mirroring of fates, I met two more Aussies named Josh and Alex, and a Southern Californian named Austin who had just been in Southeast Asia.

With my backpack off my shoulders, I went for a walk. Past Le Louvre, over Le Seine, to Le Cafe a few blocks away. I don't remember the name of the Cafe, I think it said "Flores" on one of its menus. There are so many cafes in Paris, I stopped at this one because I was tired of walking and it was on a nice busy corner. I saw something called a "Caesar salad" that was most certainly not Caesar (there was steak in it, but more essentially, there were no anchovies in the dressing and a poached egg sat in the center). That said, it was excellent. Though I'm no connoisseur, I had a Bordeaux with it that was one of the best wines I've ever had. Though that may have just been my tongue, which last tasted food in Delft.

I got to bed early, which is good because the next day was tremendous. I woke up at 7:45 to go to the Louvre with the three other guys from my dorm, and the line was less than 20 minutes. Of course we went to the Mona Lisa first, when only 20 people were surrounding it. We saw a lot of other amazing art, but the Mona Lisa stuck with me. Or rather, the crowd around it stuck with me. I think it's really interesting how art is "ordained" by aficionados and the general public. There were plenty of other really impressive pieces in the museum, but everyone gathered around the few famous ones: the Mona Lisa, Venus de Milo, Victory of Samothrace, etc. When the other guys left I went back to see the Mona Lisa again. There were maybe 80 people around it, so I waited and found my way to front and center. It was mad and wonderful. An art mosh pit.

I walked to the Notre Dame cathedral and grabbed a panini on the way there. There's a great garden just to the east of the Cathedral, where I took a nap for a while before heading back to the dorm.

I was planning on just writing for the rest of the day, but back at the hostel I met Pierre. He just got a job as a teacher in Paris and was looking for an apartment. He was just about to go to the Museum d'Orsay to meet some friends and see the exhibit "Cezanne to Picasso", so I went with him. We went the other way first and stopped at a cafe. "What beer do the French drink?" I asked. "The real French drink Belgian beer. But don't let them know." he said, with a very thick French accent. So we had a Belgian beer, "Leff". We talked about language and culture differences and played the game "spot the tourist". Outside the museum the game got easier: the tourists were the ones who stopped to look at the street artist's work. The museum was wonderful; I like Gauguin and Cezanne, but also a group vaguely related group called "Nabis" I didn't know about. After the exhibition Pierre and his friends went for drinks and I stayed to wander the museum some more. My favorites were the three or four rooms dedicated to Art Nouveau furniture and art, and the entire top floor just for Impressionists and Post-Impressionists.

At this point the sun would set in the next half hour, so I walked to the Eiffel tower, which seemed about a mile away. The lines were ridiculous of course, so I just walked around appreciating the strange structure.

Pierre had recommended I see Montmarte, which I knew from the movie "Amelie", with the scene where she follows the arrows up the mountain. I rushed over on subway and practically ran to the top. I reminded myself "it's not the hand", and ran back to the subway to catch it before they stopped running at midnight. Montmarte is a really sketchy area at night when you're further down the mountain side, but it's wonderful at the top.

The next day was dedicated mainly for traveling from Paris to Lyon. And having a fresh baked croissant in Paris. I was hoping to reserve a high speed train, but they were all taken. So I left Paris at 4:00 in the afternoon and arrived in Lyon 9:00. I knew where the hostel was, so I just had to follow the map. This wasn't so easy, the streets have to underlying structure and, as in Amsterdam and Delft, the rain was following me. After walking half a kilometer south and a a hundred meters uphill, I found the hostel and soaked in the view from the hostel's balcony. I met some people, a mechanical engineer from New Zealand and a teacher from Philadelphia, and we talked about where we'd been and where we were going. A good ending to a long day.