Lyon's Smallest Restaurant?

While I was walking around Lyon I stepped past what has to be Lyon's smallest restaurant. Unfortunately it doesn't actually serve food!

You can tell just how small the restaurant is by looking at the reflection of me taking a photo in the glass panel on the left of the photo.

Okay so it's not really a restaurant at all, but a miniature on display in the window of the Musée des Miniatures. As far as I could tell entry to the museum was free but unfortunately I didn't have the time to spare as I had to get across Lyon for my train. Next time I have to go to IARC for a meeting I'll go back and take a proper look.

One, Two, Three... Quadriga!

A quadriga is a chariot pulled by four horses abreast. It was a word that I had never heard before my recent trip to Berlin. One of the most famous quadriga sculptures sits on top of the Brandenburg Gate and the person who showed us around Berlin actually referred to referred to it as a quadriga. The week after I was in Berlin I had to go to Lyon with work and guess what I saw there? I doubt anyone will need to be told but the photo on the left is from Berlin and the one on the right from Lyon.

The quadriga atop the Brandenburg Gate is quite traditional and based upon the only surviving ancient quadriga. As you can see from the photo the sculpture in Lyon is very different; a piece of art rather than a model of real life. Apparently it was sculpted by Frédéric-Auguste Bartholdi after he became famous for creating the Statue of Liberty and represents France as a female figure attempting to control the four major French rivers. It may not be classical but I definitely prefer the one in Lyon over the one in Berlin.

Lyon at Night

After a productive day at IARC in Lyon I was invited out for dinner. In case anyone wonders why I was at a cancer research institute it's because I'm working on a project that is attempting to use knowledge mined from biomedical literature in genome wide association studies.

It was one of the staffs birthday and I was asked to join them for the dinner they had already planned. I had a bit of time to kill before meeting at the restaurant so I thought I'd see a few of the sights. I headed towards the restaurant along the river which gave me great views of the Basillica Notre-Dame de Fourviere and the Cathedral St-Jean.

From the same bridge the view north along the river towards the foot bridge was pretty good as well.

I didn't want to be late for dinner so I headed off to the restaurant leaving the rest of the sight seeing for the following day.

We had a wonderful dinner at Léon du Lyon. Even on the last day of September it was warm enough to sit out at the street tables and enjoy the relaxed multi-cultural atmosphere. Around the table were (I think) one Swede, two Brazilians, one Russian, two French and me the only Brit. Given the range of nationalities it should be no surprise that the conversation was all in English, although I did need help dealing with the French menu (thanks Mattias). Thanks to everyone for a great evening!

I'm On The Road... Again!

Another week, another work meeting. Last week I was in Berlin, this week I'm in Lyon. After my stressful trip home last week I'm quite glad that instead of flying I'd decided to travel the entire way from Sheffield to Lyon via train. It's actually very easy -- Sheffield to London St. Pancras, St Pancras to Lille on the Eurostar and then Lille to Lyon.

I was hoping to get a photo of a Eurostar train for this posting but in the end I had to resort to using one from Wikipedia. The train is so long and you access the platform in the middle that all I saw in both directions, before boarding, the train was carriages.

I'm working all day tomorrow at IARC and then I travel home on Thursday afternoon. This leaves me Thursday morning when hopefully I'll get some time to walk around and see some of Lyon. Anyone reading this been to Lyon? If so any suggestions on what I should try and see?