Romans in Lyon

The main reason for going to Lyon was to visit the world-famous museum of ancient Roman stuff that’s on the Fourviere hill right next to the ruins of the huge amphitheater. I’d read about it while researching my novel, some of which takes place right there! A whole major city, capitol of “The Three Gauls”, was up there on the hill overlooking the Rhone river, and the museum actually had little models of what it probably looked like! I could picture my characters walking through the streets! (Sorry about all the !!s, but what a thrill it was to actually be there looking at what I’d imagined it would be like!)

I’ll tell you about the rest of Lyon later. First, I’m really eager to get to the top of the Fourviere (that’s what they call it, not Fourviere hill) and show you the Romans! Mary was a good sport in this Roman immersion time, actually being interested and helpful – until we got separated and each came to – no! Not yet! Let’s go back to enthusiasm for Romans.

To reach the top of the Fourviere you have two choices, the funicular or the steps. Mary opted for the ride; I for the steps. It didn’t take long before I wished I hadn’t, but a little girl ahead of me was going slowly and counting each one, so I followed her. I think she said “450” at the top. But that wasn’t the end. Another equally long trek on paths through a forest of trees finally ended at the ornate church at the top. I’m out of shape for hills, living as I do on flat land.

Mary and I had set a meeting place near the exit of the Funicular, but when I gasped my way there, she was nowhere in sight.

I went to find her after waiting like a good girl for about 10 minutes, thinking all the while how she should have known that walking up would take a lot longer than her cushy (first time I’ve written that word) ride. I walked all around the church grounds, searching, and then finally on down the street to the amphitheater and museum. There she was, waiting for me.

We paid our 7 euros apiece (ouch!) and entered the best museum for Roman ruins I could ever have hoped to see outside of Rome. The building hugs the side of the hill with huge windows overlooking the amphitheater. You descend lower and lower down a ramp, reminding me of the Guggenheim in New York but bigger. Everywhere there are hundreds of objects to see, amazing things, unbelievably wonderful for research!

Somewhere along the way, Mary left to go to the restroom and I continued on down the ramp. I’m sure we both thought we’d end up together but no. That day, the Roman goddess of invisibility must have been on the loose because we never found each other again as long as we were on the Fourviere.

I finished up the museum, my eyes exhausted and my feet tired, then walked back up the ramp looking for Mary all the time. Nothing. Went outside and walked around the top of the amphitheater, searching. Nothing. Went back to the museum, down the ramp, back up the ramp, back to the amphitheater. Repeated this two more times then gave up. Walked back to the church and funicular station, then back to the ruins and decided to go down into the theater and whatnot to the bottom, never having seen a red vest anywhere.

It was getting late and I was wiped out. As I trudged down the hill via the road, winding around the curves toward the old town, I kept wondering what had become of Mary. Kidnapped? Robbed? I could not imagine anything else and wondered what would happen next for us. The feet kept moving, one after another, as the befuddled brain tried to make sense of things.

There are about four bridges over the Rhone (I wrote Saone in my notes; it was one of the other, since both flow through Lyon), and it’s best to find the one closest to the road leading to the hotel. In the old town, it wasn’t hard to recognize the right spot to turn for the bridge, and once it the view looked right to me so I knew I was OK. My poor feet dragged the last few blocks to the hotel and pushed open the glass door.

What was Mary doing standing there at the front desk talking with the concierge?

“What are you doing here!?” I asked a bit too loudly, interrupting their conversation. [If you’ve read the children’s book, The Best Nest, I felt as if I was in the last scene where Dad finds Mom.]

She turned around and asked me the same thing. It wasn’t the smartest question, given that we were both staying at the hotel, but the next question was more to the point: “Where have you been?!” from both of us.

It looked to me as if she had come back long ago and was leisurely entertaining herself by chatting up the handsome concierge while I lumbered hither and thither looking for her.

“I just got here,” she stated, but admitted to having stopped for ice cream at the cafe (super expensive) next door.

“Ice cream!” I declared, turning to the door.

Mary followed. We sat at a tiny table eating miniscule, expensive but pleasant cones while trying to sort out what had happened.

We still don’t know. She looked for me. I searched for her. She thought she saw my hat in the amphitheater, but then I disappeared. I might have spotted her red vest but maybe not. She didn’t know the address for the hotel or even the name, so was really in a pickle as she tried to make her way back. A kind gentleman walked with her to the river and helped her choose the right bridge, thank goodness. How scary that must have been for her!

This was the day we realized that Mary should have brought along her cell phone so we could have called each other. It’s not her fault, not all, because I had agreed that one phone was enough for what we needed. Oh well.

Romans and Us in Nimes

About 20 years ago, I wrote a novel (unpublished) about Roman times (196 AD) set mostly in France, which was then Gaul. Last year I started rewriting it (after all these years, you’d think I’d come up with a different subject), which meant re-researching and once more getting caught up in Roman history, architecture, art, social customs, and all that. How much easier it was to research with the Internet! I can’t tell you how often I had had to invent geography, food, metalworking, etc., in the early version because our university library didn’t have enough facts.

I soon knew that looking at present-day pictures of Lyon, LeHavre, and Paris did not teach me enough. Even after finishing the rewrite, I needed to check the actual layout of the countryside and what’s left of Roman settlements. A lot of time had passed, 1814 years, but the rivers, mountains, plains and ruins would still be recognizable.

That’s when I called Mary, hoping she’d want to go on a reunion trip and also go along with my ulterior motive of seeing the Roman sites around Lyon, Nimes, and Aix en Provence. She was enthusiastic, so that’s how the trip became a reality. I just realized she still hasn’t read my book. I’ll have to put it on a thumb drive and give it to her. My friend, Elaine, read it, edited it, and likes it, so even though 25 agents have said no, it might not be as bad as all that. And even if it’s never ever published, it was a great experience writing and researching it. Better than sitting around thinking that maybe one day I would. Enough about unpublished novels. On with the blog!

We rode the train to Nimes from Perpignan on the Saturday before Easter, arriving about 6:30 p.m. because our Railpasses didn’t work on the earlier trains. The hotel Concorde in the historic part of the city was short on glamour, but Ralf, the concierge, was pleasant. Right away, I messed up by paying for an extra night at the Corcorde when, actually, we needed to get to Aix en Provence on Monday. By the time I realized this, Ralf had gone and wouldn’t be back for a few days. I left a nice note in French hoping for a refund. It never came.

My first journal entry for Nimes says, “Nimes is nice.” That first evening we walked the narrow, winding streets following our map but still got lost several times. Is it correct to say you are “lost” when you don’t really know where you are going? By the time we came to a square with the right ambience and several open air restaurants, I was desperately hungry and thus irritably impatient. Mary was being so picky about agreeing on which one to eat at that I was [insert euphemism for “ready to strangle her"]. Finally, she bristled and demanded, “You choose.” I quickly selected the one on the left and was satisfied even if she wasn’t.

I loved my pizza and salad. She didn’t love whatever she had. But we both enjoyed the warm evening, and watching people stroll by, check the posted menu, and either come in or move on. Slowly, slowly, that calmed the troubled waters.

Since it was holiday time, families were out with young children, eating even later than we were. We started at about 8, ending at 10, while others were still just beginning their dinners. I especially loved watching the fathers playing enthusiastically with their young children. The children were well-behaved at the tables, presumably because staying out late and eating out were not unusual for them.

The next day, Easter, was for exploring Nimes. It more than met my expectations.

Nimes is great for Roman ruins, having then been an important regional city. The famous temple, Maison Caree (pictured) has been in continual use for one thing or another since it was built in AD 1 or so, being patched up year after year, but never left in ruins. It’s much larger than I thought it would be, and was so crowded we didn’t go in. It was, after all, a holiday weekend.

Nimes is also great for students. The narrow streets are hardly wide enough for two people walking abreast, so you quickly learn to plaster yourself against the walls to avoid being smashed by a student on a motorscooter whipping along the cobblestones. We were told that on regular days it’s not like that; the scooters have rules to obey, but this was a holiday and the police were busy elsewhere.

Where was that? By the large amphitheater setting for the Roman games to be held on Sunday. We realized that’s why we kept running into claques of people dressed like Romans. Nimes takes its heritage seriously.

Sunday morning, we bought tickets for the games, thrilled to be in a Roman coliseum that is much less ruined than most others in the world. Displays outside were fun, including shoes – the picture is of the spiked shoes made by a modern cordonnier and worn by Legionaires over the rocky Roman roads.

Inside, the picture shows Emperor Hadrian’s entry. The games included three captured Christians who had to fight an attacker, plead for their lives to the audience, and then let Hadrian decide. The first one reacted cowardly to his opponent, so we let him be killed. After that, I think the whole audience lost our appetite for brutality so we asked Hadrian to let the next two go free, and he did. They had been braver, and the red-painted wild-haired Celtic one, the favorite, actually subdued his attacker.

The weather, which up till that day had been mild, was hot. We sweltered on our stone seats, shading ourselves with whatever we had, which wasn’t much. It affected our regained good humor. By the end of the day, back at the hotel, we played double solitaire as an antidote to our crabbiness, and then slept well.