Le Menu II
Friday Morning do-the-laundry breakfast: low-grade almond croissant picked up from local stand, coupled with delicious mango juice.
Another morning I splurged and got a round du chocolate. It was so rich that I felt like I 'd eaten dessert. A once in a month kind of treat. I also picked up a baguette for Dave later that afternoon and they twist the paper around for a carrying handle (below).
While Dave was still working on Saturday morning, I went shopping. This is my lunch from the mall: a chicken sandwich with a spicy dijon mayonaise, a macaroon with chocolate filling and an apple juice. Simple and every part has a "taste," quite different from fast foods in the U.S.
Dinner up by the Basilica on Fourviere Hill at "Restaurant de Fourviere." Our first course was salmon fettucini, these are our second courses: mine (foreground) was red fish atop thinly julienned (think spaghetti-thin) zucchini and green spaghetti. Dave's was sheep shank with "legumes" (vegetables).
Cheese course followed the meal. This was the hard cheeses. The soft cheese looked like a molded cottage cheese which people sprinkled with sugar.
Yay! Creme Brulee!
Sunday's lunch (we skipped breakfast, sleeping through it): bought at the marche.
Paella and olives
We wanted a quicker meal on Sunday night, as Dave was working on his writing, so opted for a main dish at the local pedestrian restaurant street. Mine is above: "gambas" or shrimp. I got the WHOLE shrimp, along with dead rice, really dead zucchini, and a few lettuce leaves.
Dave ordered a Lyonaise salad: fresh fruits, fresh salad greens, two kinds of dressing and poached egg. It was our only mediocre meal in Lyon (aside from the laundry breakfast).
This isn't technically a meal, but rows and rows of tea jars in a local shop.
Baby greens, a teensy wedge of fresh goat chees and some tomato in a light vinaigrette at a Paul Bocuse brasserie: Le Nord. This is our last evening restaurant meal in Lyon.
Mine: salmon with three new potatoes atop a melange of chopped vegetables, zucchini the dominant ingredient.
Dave had roast pork with a brown reduction sauce--very flavorful.
Fresh strawberries in a cool blue glass was our dessert. It was served with a sugar shaker.
This was an interesting dessert one of my new friends had: Floating Island. It's sweetened egg whites, whipped, floating in a creme anglaise sauce and drizzled with caramel.
Lunch on Tuesday was back at Le Petit and I had a chicken-chutney mixture all wrapped up like a gift in filo dough, accompanied by a green salad.
Leaving on the evening train to Geneva, we stopped at "Paul" for two last baguette sandwiches. Dave also picked up a pretzel-shaped bread that had bits of ham baked into it, an apple tart and two "pain au chocolat" for our breakfast tomorrow morning. As usual, fabulous. We ate the looping bread before the train arrived, standing in the hot muggy air on the train platform. The sandwiches were our dinner as we slid through the green countryside in a silver line of cars. And the breakfast we ate the next morning in our (hot--they turn off the air conditioning at night) hotel room in Switzerland.
(click to enlarge this panoramic view of Lyon)
We took the funicular up to the top of the hill, but after a typical French dinner (two hours, but who's counting?) it was closed.
Radio Tower that looks like a miniature Tour Eiffel
The view from across the river, towards the Basilica and the radio tower. The bands of lights at the base of the buildings, above the river are "car parks." We are so old that all we wanted to go was go to sleep, so we walked through Place Bellecour and home to our hotel, finding this green pool on our way.
