Exploring Lyon – a steward’s reflections on his first ever encounter with a French city…

It was a lovely summer day in the beautiful city of Lyon as 49 young people from all over Europe ventured out into the unknown. Divided into smaller groups they all had 19 pictures to take and 6 questions to answer. In their bags and hands they each carried their supplies for the day: one sandwich with bacon, butter, and mayonnaise, one small roll of bread, one tiny bag of chips, one small box of carrots with some indeterminable sauce, one little cake and a bottle of water. Our quest was to to last for no more than four hours but in the hot, French summer these supplies turned out to be far from plenty! However nothing was to stop us from completing our task and hopefully win one of the marvellous prizes.

Lyon turned out to be quite the interesting acquaintance. Steep streets, beautiful buildings, pleasant people, and of course roaring rivers made the perfect setting for a treasure hunt. Among the things we had to find were a building named after God, a church with mismatching towers, Lyonnais specialities, and places commemorating different things. As the competitive person I am, I forced my team on a walk through all of central Lyon – back and forth. As all hope seemed lost Lady Luck looked on us with grace and let us find the sites we were the most desperate about. We had a good but tireing time trying to find everything and in the end we succeeded in finding everything and every answer to the questions.

Sadly we didn’t have time for much else than walking and taking pictures during the trip, but as it was Sunday most of the stores were closed anyway so we ‘only’ missed out on taking closer looks at the innumerable interesting buildings. Lyon is definitely worth a visit as tourist some day. We passed lots of cosy sidewalk cafés, saw tons of beautifully arranged stones (read: interesting architecture) and pretty parks. Should you at some point grow tired of the city there is always the possibility of a quick retreat to the comforting flow and hypnotizing, emerald colour of the Rhone. Like a fluid jewel it runs along the entire centre of the city and offers a soothing break in the man-made city.

Lyon is a definite must-see!