Lyon, 2

Overlooking Vieux Lyon is the amazing Fourviere Basillica, dedicated to Mary. The mosaics inside were so luminous and moving, I cried. This one is actually from the teeny chapel next door, dedicated to Joseph. Isn't this lovely? Rosie saw it and said, "Mommy, Daddy and Rosie Jo!"
The front of the Basilica...

We ate at an incredibly fancy and delicious restraunt called the Restaurant Fourviere. The waiters patiently overlooked the fact that Rosie refused to eat unless under the table, pretending to be a little lost girl.
me: "oh, I sure wish I had my little girl Rosie. She used to love to eat meat under the table, but she is lost! I don't know where she is!"
Rosie, under the table: giggle giggle, HOWP.

And there she eats her daily 12 calories to sustain her life.
This is in fronf of the restaurant, you can see a sliver of the view in the background.And down the hill a little ways is the Gallo-Roman museum, full of very COOL artifacts from ancient Roman Lyon, including these creepy and not-at-all-comforting grave markets. "Oh look, there's great aunt Tessy, wailing in agony from the underworld. Awwww...."
Matt as a Gaullic Mercury
Here you can see how the Pagain Gallic God Lugus or Sylvanus or Sucellos with his cup and hammer morphed into a recognizable Romanized version of himself, and then into Mercury.
Playing in the cool marble pebbles of a roman ruin...


To get down from the Basillica, you can follow a beautiful Rose and fruit-tree lined path straight down and then...
Down ten zillion medieval stone stairs! They kept turning corners so you'd think you were almost done, peek around a building and BAM! three hundred more steps!
Rosie loved it, we lifted her up in her stroller and she flapped her arms the whole way down, "I'm FLYING! WHEEEEE!"
My legs were all jelloey the rest of the day.At the bottom of the killer stairs, you're suddenly in the old Medieval quarter, full of delicious and welcoming little Buchoun eateries, as below:

And this cool cathedral where Rosie ran around and we watched people filling their waterbottles from the fountain

The whole quarter is riddled with secret tunnels. Some are open, and they reveal these beautiful lit courtyards. It was very cool and romantic and ancient-feeling. We found a medieval stuff store down one of these! Corsets and torques and drinking horns, oh my! Matt couldn't persuade me to get a torque, but I got a lovely and tasteful celtic hairclip.
Look at the stunned expression on this kid: "HYOOOOOOG ice cweam."


Across the river is this impressive place, and a cool fountain by the statue of liberty guy with web-footed sea-steeds.
Rue du Beouf.
Rosie's favorite barf-o-matic dizzy-making spinner toy at the park:
This park is really where we spent most of our time in Lyon, spinning around and around, avoiding the HUGE kids playing on the very cool dangerous big-kid equipment, oggling high-heels and breezy dry-clean-only dresses and stylish hairdo-s of the other moms and the leather shoes and pink pressed shirts of the other dads....
Yeah, we're slobs.
This, is a child-sized portion of french fries. Allegedly.

And That was Lyon!