Lyon in the spring

After a four year hiatus, I am back in Lyon, France, where it is spring with a vengeance. I've never had allergies quite like what I am experiencing at the moment, and whenever somebody sneezes in the street or in a store, I give them a quick look of sympathy.

I arrived around the time of the Brussels bombing, thus with some apprehension. It's amazing how the media can distort the everyday reality. As awful as it is to fear public places packed with people (excuse the alliteration), I agree with somebody who posted somewhere (the blogosphere can become one big blur) that the world is too big and beautiful to miss. I paraphrase.

That is certainly the case for Lyon. I've been in this city many times before, so I know it pretty well. This time, when the free time opens up, I know where I want to go. First stop is the neighborhood known as the "pentes de la Croix-Rousse," a neighborhood that consists of narrow streets lined with nineteenth-century buildings whose big windows were meant to let in the natural light for the silk weavers working inside them.

 Now the weavers are all gone and have been replaced with hipsters, musicians, artists, and the bobo. Of course. Plenty of well meaning stores selling environmentally correct wares such as this store which had bags made out of old firehoses, inner tubes from car and bike tires, and discarded leather from luxury brands.

The traditional vintage stores abound in the pentes, like this one  located on rue Romarin with the cute name "Carrie Bradshop."

(In French, "brader" means to sell something at a very low price.)

                                   At 94 rue Vendôme, in the more bourgeois 6th arrondissement of Lyon, a consignment shop that has friendly staff a good variety of shoes and bags in addition to clothes

Markets are a must, and Lyon has plenty of them. This morning I went to the one at the top of the pentes, on the boulevard de la Croix-Rousse, where, on one side the stalls sell food, while on the other, they sell books and records. I bought a bit of both!

I now have quite a line up of reading to keep me busy until early June when I head home.

*****

Back at the apartment, I read about this blogger whose images of older Russian people are wonderful.
My senses may be a bit overwhelmed, but indeed the world is too beautiful to miss. Here's to beautiful reality!