Les Journees du Patrimoine (Heritage Days)

I would like to walk inside that skinny red building.

I overheard a tour guide tell people that they used to have puppet shows where these two streets meet.

The archaeological garden sits near St. Jean Cathedral.  Some of the ruins of past churches come from the 4th century. Building of St. Jean Cathedral began around 1200.  Took about 200 years to build.

The weekend was top notch.  All over France, people were celebrating Heritage Days, where people can enter important places that are normally not open to the public.  Also, museums are free.  We went in 2 museums and wandered through the Hotel de Ville (City Hall). We were going to tour the Opera House, but the line was too long.

We also ate dinner at a wonderful restaurant called L'Est.  It's in an old train station. The late great Paul Bocuse has 4 restaurants in Lyon --- North, South, East and West.  Mari Homme and I have now eaten in South and East.  Both super great. I got my act together and ordered dessert and an additional glass of wine, using my French language skills.  After my requests, I asked the waitress, "What do you think?  That was good, right?"

She said, "It was perfect.  Very perfect."  

After she left our area, I said to Mari Homme, "Did you hear that?  She said my French was perfect!"

Mari Homme replied, "What was she going to say, Lee?" Though Mari Homme was unconvinced, I feel I'm making slight progress with my language skills and clearly, the waitress confirmed my view on this. 

Musee des Beaux Arts has a new Matisse painting they just purchased for 5 million Euro.  It's called Katia with the Yellow Shirt. It's v. beautiful and some say it's his last painting. Remember how he got pretty ill late in life and started making collages with cut paper? It was fun to stand in front of Katia and imagine if Matisse knew this was the final one or not?

Matisse is probably my favorite artist, so I decided to do a little reading about him today.  I wasn't too pleased to read that he had an affair with a young Russian gal named Lydia, effectively ending a 41 year marriage to Madame Matisse. He stayed in France during WWII, and that was admirable in some ways, because many artists bailed out, but he didn't help with the Resistance movement at all, which is disappointing.  His ex-wife did.  So did his daughter.  His ex-wife, Amelie, ended up in jail for 6 months.  His daughter, Marguerite, was tortured, escaped from a nazi camp-bound train and ended up hiding out in the woods for the remainder of the war, which believe me, was no picnic. There are tributes to the Resistance Fighters all over Lyon, so I'll tell you more about those in the future.  Right now, I just want you to know about the Matisse painting and know that I still love the man's work, despite my discovery of a few pretty serious shortcomings.