Let's revive this blog and go to Lyon

Let's revive this blog :-)   and although we have more lovely photos of Nancy to show you - we'll restart with the train trip from Nancy to Lyon ... train travel in France is just so fast and efficient!

Whoa!  those trees are just flashing by!!

Audrey: "In Lyon we had a Room with a View,  of the Celestins Theatre and,  on top of the hill, a princess's castle."
Lillian: "umm - Actually, that is a cathedral.  The Basilica of Notre-Dame de Fourvière."

"Is that Cathedral following us?"

Audrey: "But we weren't going to stay in the hotel room when there was a whole new city to explore. 

Lyon is built where 2 rivers bump into each other.  They are the Rhône and the Saône, but don't ask us how to pronounce those names because we got all confused.

Here we are by the side of the Saône."  






Lillian: "It was a lovely day withe the sunshine making twinkles on the river.  The bridge in this photo is the Pont Bonapart."

 Lillian: "Our daddy Giant likes tugs and barges - this photo is for him.  A barge full of sand under the elegant Pont Maréchal Juin." 

We all love the slightly unexpected things you see on these working barges - cars, motorbikes, excavator / shovels ...







Lillian:  "Lyon is the 2nd largest city in France and has a very interesting history.  It has always been an important place for trade - being at the meeting of those 2 rivers.  The Romans built Lugdunum there and it was the most important city in north-western Europe for quite a while.  During the Renaissance, Lyon became an important place for printing and publishing - and in 1466 Louis XI set up a silk weaving industry in Lyon.

Audrey:  "He brought in some weavers from Florence - and they all lived and worked in the marvelous old part of Lyon - Vieux-Lyon.  We explored this amazing area a little on our first day." 

Lillian:  "And we will show you lots of Vieux-Lyon in a future post but here are some glimpses.  

It is a very densely built-up area on the side of the hill ..."



  


Audrey:  "So there are lots of stairs and even a Funny Peculiar."

Lillian:  "She means a funicular."

Lillian:  "In our next post we will show you some of the Musée Gadagne - which is in Vieux-Lyon.  But for now we will leave you with the setting sun on the Passerelle Paul Couturier ...

 Because it was then back to our room where we settled into the lovely writing desk ... so nice of the hotel to provide us with a dolly bed."

Le Musée de l’École de Nancy - the gardens part 1

Audrey :  We are writing this post almost a year from when we were actually in Nancy.
Lillian :  Wouldn't it be nice if we could spend every Spring-time in France?

Ah well, at least we can look at all our photos.  And we loved the gardens at Le Musée de l’École de Nancy so much that we went back the following day to spend more time admiring all the flowers.

 

Lilac - Lilas in French.  This just doesn't grow in Sydney Australia - it is hard to believe how scented the flowers are - and the variety of colours.




Audrey :  It makes a cute head-dress or ear-muffs too.

Lillian :  Our people do grow Spanish Bluebells in Sydney.  These bluebells (jacinthe des bois) were a very pretty mauve, nearly pink.

Audrey :  It gets a bit confusing with lilac that is white and bluebells that are mauve ...

but weren't the tree peonies amazing!

 

Audrey :  Those flowers were so large - bigger even than our heads!

  

Lillian :  I liked this dark red peony - the French name for a peony is pivoine.

 

Audrey :  You look like a lovely Spanish dancer with that red flower in your hair Lilian.
Lillian :  Thank you, that's very sweet. 


Lillian :  A lot of the plants in the garden of the museum are those that inspired the Art Nouveau artists of l’École de Nancy.



Lovely white flowers - we think they are a wild columbine or Aquilegia (ancolie in French) they were beautifully placed in front of a screen with fabulous red poppies (pavot). 













Audrey :  Art Nouveau artists and craftspeople were very fond of poppies. 
Fern fronds are also a reoccurring motif in Nancy's Art Nouveau.



 Lillian : Our people thought that perhaps this bush with all the white flowers was the ombelliféres that is another favourite motif for artists like Emile Gallé.

Audrey :  Lucky for me that it was not the Ombrelles - because it seems that the flowers those people liked so much was probably giant hogweed a very nasty plant indeed!   (but please let us know if we have that wrong - and the Ombrelles were some other flower)

Lillian :  A Japanese Maple with wonderful purplish leaves.

Lillian :  Here we are under a Magnolia tree.



And our tour-manager helping us to pose for the camera.










 Audrey :  I think we'll have to save our photos of the buildings and things that are in the grounds of the  Musée de l’École de Nancy for our next post - because this one is so full of photos already.

 Lillian : Well, it is hard to resist sharing photos of flowers like this massive & beautiful pink peony flower.

Nancy - Art Nouveau Windows & Crème de Violette

Lillian :  We did, of course, go to the musée de l'Ecole de Nancy and we'll show you photos of that marvellous place in our next post.  In this post, we are going to show you some things we saw on the way to the Museum.

Audrey :  Because there is so much lovely Art Nouveau in Nancy that it doesn't all fit into a museum - it is all over the place!  
Lillian :  Quite - and lovely coloured glass, lead-light windows are quite noticeable examples of Everyday Art Nouveau in Nancy.
Audrey : Most of these windows are 'fan-lights' - small windows over the main door of the building.

Lillian : It is difficult to photograph windows from the outside, in daylight - the colours in the glass are actually much prettier.  For example, this lovely design with 2 blue flowers, had a sweet contrast in the colours of the backgrounds - pistacchio green behind the flowers, pretty mauve round the edge ...

Audrey : There was a row of very similar buildings - all had fan-lights with this design of 3 petaled flowers but they were done in different colours - here are 2 examples.














Audrey : And here are those 3 petaled flowers again - but this time as panels in a door.  The centers of these flowers look just like lollies!  (you can click on the photos to see them larger).

 

3 flowers

 Lillian : The shape of a fan-light window is ideal for a design of 3. 

3 branches of blue things

3 Gorgeous Red Orchids

 

Audrey :  More lovely red flowers - this window was on a corner.

  Lillian : I'm not sure what sort of flowers those are but at the bottom of the windows  -  

I think those are honeysuckle flowers.

Audrey : Another red flower - very elegant.

Lillian : And these pale blue 'clouds' are probably l'ombrelles flowers (see our last post for more info).

Audrey : Someone had their initials done in lead-light glass - I wonder what their name was ... let's see, perhaps Geneviève St-Maman?

Lillian : One more lovely lead-light window - Blossom, Butterflies and a Birdie.

We call these birds Swallows

Audrey : Which is "gulp" quite odd - in French they are l'hirondelle. 

 

Lillian : I think we might have taken the wrong bus to the Musée de l'Ecole de Nancy because we did have to walk quite a long way - and it was rather hot so this street sign seemed quite apt.

Supper - lovely olives, herbed cheese, grapes...

Audrey : Ah, but after the Museum, we did a little shopping and had a nice supper in our hotel room - and - well - um - perhaps you had a little too much to drink that evening Lillian. 

 Lillian :  Oh - the Crème de Violette.  It is such a pretty purple colour, it smells and tastes like pretty violets ...

Even in a plastic cup it is a gorgeous colour

Kir Violette - with some bubbly

 Lillian : I think that I forgot that it is also an alcohol. 

Audrey :  Poor thing - you weren't quite yourself the next morning. 

Vézelay - the Town - Part 1

Lillian :  Vézelay is such a pretty and picturesque little town.

Audrey :  Well, after visiting the Basilique Sainte-Marie-Madeleine our people needed lunch.  They ate under this



at a hotel & restaurant appropriately called Les Glycines.

The scent is heavenly!

Wisteria is not the only purple/mauve flower - Lillian found some lovely irises too

 Lillian : Purple is my favourite colour.
Audrey :  We would never have guessed!  But enough with the pwetty spring flowers - let's see some of the buildings & street-scapes.

A lane with a leaning wall & a new 
copper down-pipe

It is Hilly!

Lillian : Vézelay is really hilly and some buildings are quite wonderfully higgledy piggledy -

We think this is probably the Town Hall

Audrey : Some of the roof-lines are a little bit .. umm .. eccentric!

Lillian :  Ceramic shingles & built in ventilation.









Audrey :  We found a huge door - I think a giant must live here.

Lillian :  It was probably made large so that a carriage could go through.

Audrey : We waited a while, but we saw no carriages or giants.

Come on people, hurry up!

Audrey : This cute little house was wedged into a corner.  We thought it would make a perfect home for a Nursery Rhyme Character or for some Blythe Dolls.

But no-one was home that afternoon.