June 6 - June 20 LYON, France. 3053 Miles

I will start this post by apologising to Lyon - sorry, Lyon.

As you may remember, we left the van at a Lyon campground while we were in Sicily - well, we had a pretty horrible flight back (3 hours of flying and over 11 hours of waiting- blah) and they lost our bag (it turned up the next day). We also had been putting off a whole bunch of boring stuff we had to do until we got back from Sicily.

Unfortunately the end result was that we got a bit fed up, and decided to get moving - so we only spent one afternoon in the city itself.

I will quote from Jane's diary

"More admin. Went food shopping - took 4 hours, no kidding. Sick of this campsite, leaving tomorrow. We had Flunch - it was delicious" (Flunch is a restaurant chain, we had the salad bar and were glad to be reunited with vegetables)

So, while Lyon is lovely, and looks beautiful, we only got to see one church and a museum.

Sorry, Lyon - we barely got to know you.

The Basilique Notre-Dame de Fourviere....

....which sits on a hill above Lyon. The sky was doing some cool stuff that day.

I was doing some pretty amazing things too.

Lyon is actually pretty big....I think.

The inside is VERY golden and covered in mosaics (that is a painting, however)

One of the amazing mosaics

The crypt underneath the church

There were prayers in different languages down the stairs to the crypt - including this one in Maori.

A view from town back up to the Church.

The Roman museum had a vast and awesome selection of mosaics. This one has a jaunty nautical theme.

I'm so excited by this large pot I am doing a traditional Scottish hat dance.

The roman amphitheatre

Lots of Roman carving seemed to involve Hercules getting boozed. Here he is being held up by Silenus (a Satyr, and an assistant to Dionysus)

We had a great meal in the nearby village of Dardilly - we could figure out the whole menu apart from two dishes. The owner would not let me order 'Tete au Veau' (head of calf) because it is 'not for you, only for the French', and he wouldn't take away Jane's entree because she hadn't eaten enough of her foie gras.

You can see my left hand eagerly hovering over the fork, willing Jane to hurry up and take the photo.

Some sort of chocolatey carry on with ice-cream.

Quite full, bit boozed, not looking forward to the cycle home.

This is a traditional confectionary called the 'Lyons Pillow''. The story goes that the city was threatened by the plague, so they had a good pray, the plague went away and they invented this in celebration. Having eaten one, I think I prefer the plague.

This is a van, towing a caravan, towing a ticket booth for a fairground ride.