Guignol & Lyon

Hello faithful readers I hope you are all well. I apologise for my slackness in writing, it has been a long time I know but in the last week I have been on the move like crazy. Since I last blogged I have visited Lyon, Carcasonne, Paris, Singapore, Tokyo and now you find me in Yokohama.

Three faces of Guignol, Puppet Museum (attached to the Gadagne Museum)

I will surely see some sights here, but for the while the blog will be slowing right down. After a few weeks in Japan most of the rest of the year will be spent in the republic of Georgia, of ex-USSR fame. I will be diving into English teaching there, so there won't be so many travelling adventures to tell. I will be attempting some e-publishing for Kindles and supported devices through Amazon, and that in itself will be a bit of an adventure - more on that as it happens. For now I will relate the story of Lyon.

 I met a strange person in Lyon, his name is Guignol, 203 years old and lived in Lyon all his life. He is a puppet! And above you can see three of him at the Lyon Marionette Museum. The local hero of the working class, Guignol has appeared in an incredible number of plays and is a symbol of the city of Lyon. I saw the interesting 'Guignol and Pimfombasse's Creditors', one of the original 41 plays written around 200 years ago. basically it is a short play and Guignol, a servant, ends up hitting everyone with a big stick! It has its roots in Italian Comedia Dell'Arte, from the famous character Punchinella. It's amazing to think a puppet character could have such a life of his own, but I felt Guignol was in all the amazing alleyways and connecting passageways of the medieval city of Lyon.

Along the Rhone River, swimming pool can just be seen.

 If only it had been a little cooler. The hostel room was quite a disaster, so hot, so much noise = very little sleep indeed. Along the banks of the Rhone here you can just make out a swimming pool complex where you're required to have stock standard bather, or buy some for 10 Euro from the machine. My simple black board shorts were not standard issue. But it was so hot I decided to pay the money and swim anyway.

Roman Amphitheatre on Fourviere.

Lyon has its roots back in the Roman days when it was one of the largest Roman cities in all of Gaul. At the top of a hill you get a magnificent view of Lyon, but on the hill (Fourviere) are some of the city's top attractions, including two Roman Amphitheatres and the Gallo-Roman museum, chock-full of Roman pieces from the century before Christ onwards.

Basilica Notre-Dame de Fourviere

 Also atop the hill is the Notre Dame cathedral, not medieval in style, rather noveau instead inside, dating only back to the 19th Century. However, very different with lots of jade-type colours used on the inside and what appears to an entire second church below. Down below nearly at river level is the Cathedral of Saint John the Baptist. More traditional and medieval, the building is more like 800 years old or more. An astronomical clock inside look very interesting but was alas, not working.

The city itself is well, a big city but one full of historical buildings, museums and more. In fact, the Lumiere brothers lived and worked in Lyon, where they also created the first cinema projector. Their old house is now a museum to the origins of film. The Gadagne Museum, where I also found the Marionette/Puppet Museum, tells the history of the city in great detail. Visit Lyon and you won't be bored!