What I’ve Learned in Two Months on the Road
My buddy, Bacchus, at Lugdunum
We just finished our 10-day stay in Lyon. We visited most of the tourist sites that we studied on YouTube or Trip Advisor, and we used the city as a launch point to visit Annecy, which is a really beautiful city in the Haut Savoie in the pre-Alps, and we also went south one day to Ampuis and Condrieu to visit the wine regions of the Northern Rhône.
Côte Rôtie in the Northern Rhône of France
We liked Annecy and the Côte Rôtie considerably more than we liked Lyon, which we had high hopes for. People who really like Lyon say things like, “Skip Paris, just come to Lyon.” I understand that everyone has their passions and their opinions, but why anyone would skip Paris is well-beyond my understanding. I have been to New York, Washington DC, London, Rome, Amsterdam, Mexico City, San Francisco, Hong Kong, Taipei, Chicago, and a lot of other world-class cities, and for my money Paris is the best city in the world. A thousand people will disagree with me, and thus my point. As for Lyon, I think Chien-hui summed it up best when one day she blurted out, “Lyon is so beige.”
Gray, steel, and cold Lyon.
And yes, she was spot-on. It was beige, and architecturally rather bland. It’s far more modern than the charming Annecy or Dijon with their medieval cores, or the old villages like Condrieu, so it feels like a working class, bustling midwestern city from the US. It certainly didn’t help that it was fall, and gray the entire time we were there, which created a kind of heaviness and steely vibe. The two rivers that created the city 2,000 years ago, the Rhône and the Saône, flow south like a bi-bodied metal snake before joining its head south of the city. They can be seen, and felt, as the winds whip up to the viewpoints in the heights east and west of the city; the November cold in Lyon is pervasive. There is also a rush to Lyon that is felt as you traverse the streets, enter its Metro stations, shopping areas, or the train station. The people are in a hurry, and they aren’t F’ing around when they are flowing to their destinations. Glum faces of severe disapproval if you are walking in the wrong place or blocking them in any way. I know that look. They need to get to work, or get home and they are late and you, stupid tourist, are ruining their day. Automobile traffic is hideous.
There is plenty to see and do in Lyon, of course. The city was founded as Lugdunum, a major Roman trading post and crossroads, and some of the very best-preserved Roman ruins remain in the western heights. They are spectacular, as is the Museum of Roman Civilization with its hundreds of excavated pieces, mosaics, and statues. And very near to them is the most beautiful Catholic cathedral I have visited, The Basilica of Notre-Dame de Fourvière, which took even my atheist-breath away. The ultramodern museum of the Confluence is also very worth seeing, and many people like to visit the funky neighborhood of La Croix-Rousse—we liked it best of anywhere in Lyon—to see the giant mural and traverse the ancient secret silk passageways. But honestly, these are just things to do in between what most people come to Lyon for—eating.
We did our fair share of that when we first arrived in Lyon—and here was a real moment of learning for us—you cannot eat out for most of your meals over two months of travel without developing an aversion to food. Imagine? Me? Not wanting to eat. But it’s true. It took a while to get there but eventually the idea of some rich, French sauce paired with pork or duck has become a negative. My system just couldn’t handle it, so I just stopped eating.
I did a lot of cooking back home in the US, nearly five or six days a week. I put a lot into my kitchen time. I would wake up on Saturday morning and go to my cookbook bookshelf, pull three or four books and come up with a theme for the week: Mexican, Californian, Southern, Thai, Italian, and ironically, one of my favorites, French. Then I’d make my ingredients list and finally head out to the three or four stores in Seattle where I knew the best ingredients were: DeLaurenti, Big John’s PFI, True Food, Sosio’s, Metropolitan Market, Central Market, etc. That ingredient list would be magnetized flip side up to the fridge with the meals listed for the week and I would cross them out each night after completing the task. Chien-hui would give a thumbs up or down (admittedly, rarely, but it happened) or if it was particularly good, she would say, “This meal is on the list!” Being “on the list” was high praise.
I am reflecting on this because while in Lyon, I just had to start cooking again. Not only for my physical well-being, but for my mental health. Pretty ironic, no? I’m in the gastronomical capital of France—some would say the world—and I just couldn’t pay for another prepared bite. The silver lining here, besides my stomach feeling and operating as it once used to, was that the Sunday market in the Croix-Rousse is one of the most incredible outdoor markets in France. It's literally a half mile long running the Boulevard de la Croix-Rousse filled with every kind of vendor one could need: meat, chicken, fish, bread, olives, cheese, vegetables, fruit, olive oil, wine—you name it, they had it and the quality was cliché good. (Have you ever eaten the produce in France?) I had everything I needed to return to my comfort zone of the frying pan and the chef’s knife.
La Croix-Rousse Market
When you begin a life-changing journey like this, one where you have dreamt for years of what it would be like to be free of work, to live life on your own terms, to do what you want whenever you want, it is easy to come out of the chute with such thirst that you just can’t consume it all fast enough. Art, gulp-gulp-gulp! Food, stuff-it-down! Walking, miles and miles, and miles every day. Stairs? I eat stairs for breakfast! Sleep? I get up when I want! What day is it? I don’t know and I don’t care! I bet you’re thinking that it all it sounds pretty good. And it was for several weeks but that unbridled lust eventually became fatigue and things began to hurt. My feet, my legs, my stomach, and if I am completely honest, even my eyes. “Sure enough, another Van Gogh.” Once that happens, it’s time to take stock again of what you’re doing.
Do I want to go back to my life? Hell no. But I am admitting to myself that there are things about the way I was living before that I need to incorporate here that will elevate my outlook and bring me peace through the gift of normality. Cooking makes a huge difference to my outlook. “Fait Maison” as they say here (Homemade). Reading. Comfortable chairs. God, I miss comfortable chairs. Laundry days are a highlight because it’s just a methodical thoughtless activity that results in something tangible and clean. The days of just doing nothing is such a welcome state of mind. One of our favorite YouTube channels is a couple from the US that moved to southwestern France, Jason and Raina, that go by the name Baguette Bound, and they coined a term I often hear Chien-hui reuse, “Productivity Guilt.” That feeling that my God, you’re traveling the world, you’re doing something everyone wishes that they were doing, you better suck it up and get back out there, and experience it all at number 11 on the dial. And the lesson is, you just can’t. You must be yourself no matter where on the globe you’re standing, and do the things that make you, you. Especially the boring stuff. Turns out that’s the good stuff.
Matt & Chien-hui at chilly Lake Annecy, France
So, while I wasn’t ecstatic about Lyon, I am pretty sure I caught it at a bad time in my life and I do feel I owe it another date. I certainly loved its proximity to other very beautiful places. In the summer sun, I bet you it looks far less beige. And, if I am in a place where dining out is a rare treat again and something I look forward to all week, as I used to, then I am certain the food will be everything I hear it is.