Returning to Lyon, France after 30 Years: A Planning Phase

http://www.planetware.com/map/lyons-map-f-lyons_c.htm

Keeping up my French studies and cultural exposure through movies and books for the past couple of weeks, I am also looking forward to traveling to Europe, that is, London and Lyon in September. August is truly the month to relax, especially when the hot weather is breaking records in Minneapolis.

I’m researching possibilities for our upcoming trip to Lyon. If you have read some of my earlier entries on this blog and others about Lyon, you know that Lyon is the first place I ran headlong into a French immersion experience about 30 years ago. I'm very interested to see how the city has changed as well as to go to so many places I didn't have the opportunity to explore.

While Paris is very interesting (certainly an understatement), Lyon is equally interesting to me because of its 2000 year long history. The Romans called it Lugdunum and there are many ruins from that period (Historic Sites in Lyon) that have been excavated and now have been put on display. While one of a group of American graduate students in Lyon at L'Université de Lyon III, our contacts there arranged a few site seeing tours within Lyon and it left me wanting to go back for more.

The one place I’m sure I will not be stopping to see again is the steel plant for the Renault auto plant. I was a business student and we were interested in the business aspects of the formation of the European Union. Our group was taken on a special tour there to give us exposure to the business world of Lyon and France. I will never forget all of the hot steel “sparks” flying and the tremendous heat.

Lyon is also famous for its cuisine and its production of many of the great French chefs of modern times. I’m planning on enjoying this aspect of Lyon in great depth.  I'm cruising through a list of restaurants to see what their logistical distance will be from our hotel which is located in Presqu’Île between the rivers Rhône and Saône. Google maps do a fine job of illuminating the shortest routes between me and my expected repasts.