Clermont-Ferrand: City of Disappointments That Mostly Worked Out OK

Clermont-Ferrand.

From Lyon, we went west into central France to the city of Clermont-Ferrand, capital of the Auvergne region ("the Idaho of France"). Auvergne is smack-dab in the middle of the Massif Central, a mountainous plateau created by a series of volcanoes that have been extinct for about 6,000 years. Clermont-Ferrand is not a major tourist destination and the main reason we went there (in addition to crossing off another region) was to get to the Puy de Dome, a 4800-foot-tall extinct volcano about six miles from the city. Upon arriving at the train station in Clermont-Ferrand, though, we learned that the shuttle that takes tourists to the mountain doesn't begin running till mid-June and there was no other way to get to the mountain without renting a car (which we were not prepared to do). That was disappointment #1.

Puy de Dome from the cathedral tower.

So we walked to the hotel we had booked. On getting there, they had no record of our reservation, despite having copies of e-mails they had sent me asking about our arrival time, and the hotel was entirely booked for the night. The desk clerk was clearly nervous - we could actually see beads of sweat form on his forehead! After apologizing profusely, he called another hotel in town with comparable rates and was able to get us a room there. So that was disappointment #2, but it worked out. Mostly. On arriving at the new hotel, we were shown our room, which seemed like a room they never used; the keycard reader was broken and we had to ask the desk clerk to use the master key to let us into the room whenever we came in. Other than that, though, it was a perfectly fine hotel. Plus, it was close to the train station and it seemed to be the place where the train conductors spent the night, judging by the large number of them we saw in the lobby. If it's good enough for the French train company, it's good enough for us!

Our very own luxury car commercial!

From the hotel, we walked into the center city to the tourist office. Walking through the narrow, pedestrian-only streets of the old town, I was reminded of commercials for luxury cars that "combine European handling with American horsepower." The streets were perfect for that kind of commercial - narrow, steep, twisty, and mostly deserted of people. Perhaps I only thought of that, though, because the Michelin tire company is based in Clermont-Ferrand.

The tourist office was disappointment #3. We were hoping to get some ideas of what to do in the town if we couldn't get to the Puy de Dome. The young woman we talked to, though, was not terribly helpful (although in her defense, she seemed young and new at the job so perhaps she just wasn't well-trained). She was perfect friendly, but all she did was give us a map and point out where we were. There were no suggestions of what to do with our afternoon in her city, beyond the cathedral and another older church.

Clermont-Ferrand's cathedral.

We decided to get a late picnic lunch and we walked to a covered market hall to buy supplies. This was disappointment #4 because, being a Monday, almost every vendor inside was closed. But it worked out:  two cheese shops and a produce shop were open. So we bought some good local cheese and some fruit then went to find a bakery to get some bread. We found one down the street that specialized in Mediterranean bread and we bought a very good large round similar to pita. While we were there, another tourist was there trying to buy something, too. She was middle-aged and she didn't speak French or English - just Portuguese because she was from Brazil. The shop-keeper had no idea what she was talking about, but fortunately Lisa had taken a semester of Portuguese in college and was able to translate a bit for the woman. She sampled a couple things, then left with an explanation we didn't understand. Only after she was gone did Lisa realize she was explaining that she was going to get her husband and she would return. We bought our loaf and left, hoping that the shop-keeper could handle the woman when she eventually returned!

We ate our picnic lunch in the piazza between the cathedral and the tourist office. While we did so, I noticed a woman across the piazza with a big professional-looking camera taking lots of pictures of us and our side of the piazza. We really hope she was a professional photographer taking some arty shots of us and not a private investigator tailing us through Clermont-Ferrand! After lunch, we went back to the tourist office to see if we could talk to a different person and get better information about the city, but no such luck - the only other person there was on the phone the whole time. So we gave up and decided to check out the cathedral, since we were right there.

Clermont-Ferrand from the cathedral tower.

The cathedral was a standard 13th-century Gothic church, although not as tall or as long as most of the ones we saw in the north. The only vaguely interesting thing about it was that it was built out of black stone, the local volcanic rock, rather than the creamy white stone of northern cathedrals. While inside, Lisa noticed a group of four Chinese tourists paying the custodian to climb the tour. We figured, why not do it. We hadn't climbed any church towers in France yet and it's not like we had anything else to do. It was 250 steps to the top, 150 feet up. It was another sunny (but very cool) day so we had a nice view of the whole city and the mountains surrounding it, including the Puy-de-Dome towering above the rest. We also saw plenty of big hills/small mountains surrounding the town that looked a lot closer so Lisa had the idea of trying to climb one of those instead. After getting some pictures, we climbed back down and went to the tourist office for our third visit of the day. The young woman helped us again and said, yes, we could climb the closest one we saw, it's part of a park with trails. She also gave us a bus map showing how we could get a local bus close to the park, to save some time. She was much more helpful when we asked specific questions!

Notre-Dame-du-Port.

Notre-Dame-du-Port.

So we started walking towards the bus stop. On the way, we passed the older church the tourist office woman had mentioned to us, the church of Notre-Dame-du-Port, a UNESCO World Heritage site. We decided to check it out, and we're glad we did. It's a pure Romanesque church from the 12th century, meaning there are no wall decorations, there aren't a lot of windows (unlike a Gothic church) and there are more domes and rounded arches and barrel vaults (unlike Gothic churches' pointy arches and spires and cross vaults). It was a very beautiful space but the most interesting thing are the carved column capitals, most of them original, from the 12th century. Many were of plants, but the more interesting ones depicted scenes from Christ's temptation in the desert of the Annunciation. The best was a column showing scenes from a fourth-century AD poem about the war between virtues and vices. One of the sides of the column showed the suicide of Anger, which Lisa was very excited about!

The suicide of Anger.

Path up the Puy de Chanturge.

After the church, we continued to the bus stop and it took about 20 minutes to get from there to the stop we wanted close to the smaller volcano, the Puy de Chanturgue. From the stop, we walked up a steep street that dead-ended in a train leading up the hill. The map said it was about a quarter mile up to the top and it only took us about a half hour to get from the bus stop to close to the summit. The trail was overgrown in places and also quite steep in a few spots. Because it was getting increasingly cloudy, Lisa was only wearing her Birkenstocks, and the trail got really steep near the top, we didn't go all the way to the summit (much like when we climbed Arthur's Seat in Edinburgh!). But we still got some great views of the town and had a little adventure climbing an extinct volcano. It made up for not being able to get to the Puy de Dome.

Near the summit.

Path down the Puy de Chanturge.

We climbed back down and took the bus back close to our hotel to change for dinner. We had found a couple restaurants in a local guidebook that looked good and we asked the woman at the hotel desk which was better. She recommended the one down the street from our hotel and we were not disappointed. It was one of the better restaurants we ate at in France. We started with an aperitif of Aveze, a local Auvergne liquor made with vervain. Lisa had fondue and a small salad while I had a lentil/bacon/lettuce salad and then a cheesey/bacony/potato dish that was delicious. For dessert, Lisa had a fantastic chocolate mousse and I had very good panna cotta with raspberry sauce. There were four different tables of Americans in the restaurant (including us) and only two or three of French people. We were the last ones to leave the place around 10 and we asked the waiter if he usually has so many Anglophones there. He said it never happens and he doesn't know why there were so many there that night. It was a nice way to end our day in Clermont-Ferrand. The next morning, we off to the last new stop on this trip: Strasbourg.

Another view of Clermont-Ferrand. The cathedral is the
little black speck in the middle.

Geneva

Train to Geneva.

Geneva.

We visited Geneva (a city in Switzerland almost entirely surrounded by France) as a day trip from Lyon and, unfortunately, it turned out to be a bit of a disappointment. This was primarily because this Sunday was the one day of inclement weather we had on our trip: cold, cloudy, and heavy rains all day. The main reason we wanted to go to Geneva was to see the mountains and the lake and with the clouds and fog, it was hard to see much of either (although we did get some nice mountain views on the train between Lyon and Geneva as it wound through little river valleys and, for the last part of the way, followed the course of the Rhone). Also, because it was a Sunday, most stores and restaurants were closed, meaning there was less to do than we thought.

Fountain in Place des Terreaux, Lyon.

Before we left Lyon, though, we stopped on our way to the train station in the "new" part of town (mostly 18th and 19th centuries) to see a huge fountain in front of the city hall. It was designed by the same man who did the Statue of Liberty, Frédéric Bartholdi. It's a pretty impressive piece of work, as you can see from the picture.

John Calvin's chair. Sadly, one of the
more interesting pictures from Geneva.

Once in Geneva, we had lunch at an Indian restaurant since most non-ethnic restaurants were closed for the day. It was very good food, but when the bill came, we learned that what people had told us is true: Switzerland is very expensive! The meal cost probably twice what we would have paid for a decent, sit-down lunch in France.

Chapel of the Maccabees.

Detail of the Chapel of the Maccabees.

We crossed the Rhone (which leaves Lake Geneva here) into the old city to visit the cathedral. After all, there wasn't much else to do and we wanted to get inside! It's a pretty standard 13th century Gothic cathedral but it has the distinction of being Protestant since 1535. Geneva was a major center of the Reformation in the 16th century, led by John Calvin who had fled to Geneva to escape Catholic persecution in France. He wasn't always popular in Geneva, either, but he promoted the Reformation all he could and even convinced the city council of Geneva to back him in the face of opposition from the city's aristocratic families. At any rate, the cathedral was Calvin's church and his chair is still preserved there for all to see. The other distinctive feature of the church is the Chapel of the Maccabees, built in the early 15th century in flamboyant late Gothic style but then turned into classrooms once the church became Protestant. It was restored in the 19th century and it now looks like an over-the-top neo-Gothic space with lots of bright colors on the walls and fancy stained glass windows.

Stained glass from the
cathedral, now in the art
museum.

We also checked out the art museum, which is always free. They admitted in their brochure, though, that they don't have anything particularly famous and we were pretty museumed-out after the last two days in Lyon and Arles so we didn't spend a whole lot of time there.

Instead, we walked back down to the lake and saw the giant fountain they've installed at the point where the lake narrows and the Rhone exits. We also saw a flower clock, which is pretty much exactly what it sounds like. It's a bunch of flowers planted to look like the face of a clock and there are working hands that tell you what time it is. While at the lake shore, we looked into the schedule of boat rides around part of it, but none of them fit well with the train schedule. Besides, it was just such a miserable day weather-wise that we wouldn't have been able to see much anyway. So we decided to call it a day and head back to the train station.

Flower clock.

On the way, we stopped in a touristy gift shop and bought a small Swiss Army knife (without which no trip to Switzerland is complete!). Once we got back to Lyon, the rain had cleared up a bit and we got ice cream from the same fantastic ice cream shop as the night before. So between that and the good Indian food, the day wasn't a total loss!

Lake Geneva with the fountain.

Despite (or perhaps because of) the crappy day we had, we want to go back to Switzerland but in nicer weather and probably not in Geneva. After all, the reason to visit the country is to see the mountain scenery so we think we'd rather go to a small town in the mountains and hike around for a few days rather than stay in a city. Here's hoping we get a chance to do that!

Bonus picture: Almost all political decision in Switzerland are done
by popular referendum and these are ads for those.
(We don't know what the one on the right is all about, though!)

Lyon, or, Like the Romans, We Crossed the Rhone

Avignon and the Rhone from the train.

We took an early-morning train from Avignon to Lyon. Unfortunately, this meant taking an even earlier shuttle to the train station because the new(ish) station serving high-speed trains through Avignon is several miles outside of town while the older station serving "normal" trains was just a short walk from our hotel. Once in the new station, we were surprised by the large number of Germans hanging around. Only when we got on our train with them did we realize that the train continued on through France to Frankfurt, Germany, so presumably these were all tourists on their way home.

Fourvière Hill with the basilica and the Eiffel Tower look-alike.

Lyon from the summit of Fourvière Hill.
Mont Blanc is somewhere in all that haze.

We got to Lyon mid-morning. It's almost straight north up the Rhone from Avignon so it marks the point at which our "Circle Tour of France" made the big turn northward to start heading home. Lyon is in the Rhone-Alpes region, my fourteenth region (2/3 of the way to seeing every region!) and Lisa's fifteenth. Lyon is the third-largest city in France and it's situated at the confluence of two major rivers, the Rhone and the Saone, with a a huge steep hill behind it - not unlike Pittsburgh, actually. This strategic position appealed to the ancient Romans, who founded the city in the first century BC, and it became the most important city in Roman Gaul. After a day in Arles, I was excited about continuing my tour of ancient Roman cities in southern France!

Hotel staircase.

We started by taking a bus across town from the train station to "old Lyon," the medieval/Renaissance part where our hotel was located. The desk clerk was SO friendly and helpful! He gave us a map, a booklet about old Lyon, restaurant recommendations, sights to see, where to get the best views of the city, where to get the best ice cream - everything we could possibly want to know. He was better than a tourist office and gave us a good impression of Lyon right away. The hotel itself was charming - on a pedestrian street in an old building with a spiral staircase and all the rooms opening onto the staircase. The hotel was one of the original post offices when it was first established in France.  As a result, it slanted just a bit!

Stairs up the hill.

From there, we walked back the way we came across the Saone River to the Saturday market we saw lining the river. We foraged for supplies for a picnic lunch: bread and cheese (of course) plus a lot southern produce we don't really have in Cesson - cherries, olives, and watermelon. We also got a huge hunk of nougat to take home to the US to share with Lisa's mom. We decided to have our picnic lunch on top of Fourvière Hill, the huge hill behind old Lyon. It was a good idea, but we stupidly decided to walk up the hill rather than take the funicular. (Lisa adds that she ended up being very cranky while sweating up the hill in a sun dress.)  It was a hot, sunny, muggy day and climbing hundreds of steep steps up a 950-foot-tall hill was not fun. However, we enjoyed our picnic at the top, cooled down, and got some great views from the summit looking east over the city. In fact, we could even see Mont Blanc, the highest peak in the Alps and about a hundred miles away on the French-Italian border!

Basilica of Notre-Dame de Fourvière.

The summit of Fourvière has a couple features that make it like a mini-Paris. First, there's the funicular up the hill, similar to the one in Paris going up the hill of Montmartre (although Lyon's is older). Second, there's the Tour Metallique, a 19th-century tower that looks like the upper portion of the Eiffel Tower. Third, there's the Basilica of Notre-Dame de Fourvière, built in the late 19th century to thank the Virgin Mary for saving Lyon from the Prussians during the Franco-Prussian War (sort of like Paris' Sacre-Coeur being built in the same time period to ask God's forgiveness because of the "divine punishment" of the French defeat by the Prussians). The basilica is very different from Sacre-Coeur, though. It's not as big and it's built in more of a traditional western church style than the neo-Byzantine architecture of Sacre-Coeur. Inside, there are lots of mosaics dealing with the life of Mary and her miraculous interventions in French history. Sadly, there's a large restoration project in the works right now so there was a lot of scaffolding (like so many other churches we've visited this year!). Below the main sanctuary is a much-less ornate one dedicated to Joseph - apparently the money ran out after completing the Mary-centric upstairs!

Joan of Arc mosaic from the basilica.

Outside the basilica, we refilled our water bottle at a public water fountain and met a young American couple doing the same thing. They knew we were American because of our stainless steel water bottle, they said; no French person would carry something like that! They're from Portland, Oregon, but they've been working in Paris for the past year (they didn't say specifically what they did) and were now traveling around France, much like us. It was strange to meet our doppelgangers.

Roman theater.

Part of a chariot race mosaic, Gallo-Roman Museum.
This guy obviously did not win the race.

Also on top of the hill are the remains of two ancient Roman theaters and the Gallic-Roman Museum. The Roman city was actually located on the top of the hill and it was only in the Middle Ages that this area was abandoned as the population moved down to the lowlands along the rivers (probably because the aqueducts stopped working and they needed fresh water - that's Lisa's guess). We looked at the theaters from the outside but didn't go in and climb around. I had my fill of provincial Roman theaters the day before at Arles. Plus, it was so hot and humid that we preferred to go inside the museum. It was fantastic, probably the best collection of ancient Roman material I've seen outside of Italy (although, to be fair, I haven't seen much ancient Roman stuff outside Italy). I think it was more interesting and better-explained than even the Louvre's collection. It was one of the few places where I commandeered Lisa's camera to get pictures of the inscriptions, funerary monuments, statues, mosaics, and sarcophagi, all of which I can hopefully use the next time I teach a class on Roman civilization. (I could post tons of pictures here, but I won't since most of them are probably only of interest to classicists like me!)

Traboule (covered passageway).

Cathedral.

After the museum, we walked back down the hill into old Lyon - a much easier walk than coming up. We did some shopping at an artisanal honey store, a used book store, and a stained glass store. We also walked through one of the traboule, the covered passageways that were constructed in the Renaissance to link two parallel streets by going through the courtyards of the buildings between. They were meant to protect the skeins of silk as they were moved between workshops (Lyon was a major silk-production center in the Renaissance). We checked out the cathedral, which was just a big Gothic church. Most of the exterior sculpture was destroyed during the French Revolution. The only real distinguishing feature that I noticed was that the tower of the church wasn't the pointy Gothic spire you see on northern churches but a squat square tower in the Italian style, like what one sees on old churches in Rome. We also looked at the "archaeological park" next to the cathedral which contained the remains of very old churches pre-dating the cathedral. In fact, Lyon claims to have the oldest Christian community in France.

Dramatic clouds, but where's Jesus or Mary?

We had dinner in old Lyon, too, then went to the ice cream place recommended by the hotel clerk. We shared a scoop of blood orange sorbet and it was delicious! On the walk back to the hotel, we stopped to admire the setting sun and the clouds. It was very dramatic and it looked like something out of one of the sixteenth-century paintings of Jesus or Mary we had seen in Italy the week before (although I don't think it looks as dramatic in these pictures as it did in person). After that, it was off to bed before our day-trip the next day to Geneva, Switzerland. Lyon is definitely a city I would like to which I would like to return. It was very beautiful and everyone was so friendly. It would be a great place to come spend a relaxing few days, I think.

Bonus picture for Lisa's dad: Dionysus!

The Roman Emperor Caracalla. (Or is it my graduate adviser?)

Bonus picture for Lynn: Stained-glass store.

Arles

Children being instructed in the finer arts of gladiatorial combat.

We went to Arles as a day trip from Avignon, since it's only a 15-minute train ride south down the Rhone River. Arles was an extremely important Roman city as it was the first bridge over the Rhone above the mouth of the river, making it a key transportation and trade crossroads. (The bridge itself was pretty ingenious. Rather than build a standard stone-and-brick bridge, the Romans constructed a permanent pontoon bridge of boats linked together that would rise and fall with the river, preventing the possibility of the bridge being washed away in a flood.) Arles thus has one of the largest and best-preserved collections of ancient Roman ruins in France.

Amphitheater

Despite the sun and the intense heat (good thing I had a new hat!), we saw as many of the ancient sites as we could in our afternoon in the city, starting with the amphitheater. It's basically a mini version of the Colosseum in Rome, but much better preserved. In fact, it's still in use today for bull fights (although unlike the Spanish version, in the Provencal version, the bull isn't killed) but this means its hard to tell what is original Roman-era construction and what is restored, modern construction. Still, you get a good feel for what an intact amphitheater would have been like.

Roman theater.

Storming the castle!

Eef you're appee ann yoo know eet...

Next to the amphitheater is the ancient theater, used for dramatic performances and dating from the first century AD. During the Middle Ages, it was used as a quarry for other building projects in the city and so while part of it has been restored, it's only about half the size it would originally have been. This, too, is still in use for summer-time outdoor plays. While we were sitting in the top row admiring the site, a large group of French schoolchildren entered. At a signal from their teacher, they all shouted and started clambering up the seats as quickly as possible. It looked like they were coming right for us! Once at the top, though, they all sat down and started singing "If You're Happy and You Know It" in English. We have no idea what it was all about, but it was entertaining to watch!

Baths of Constantine.

We also visited the Baths of Constantine, dating from the fourth century AD and only about a third of which still survives. The site wasn't well-explained and it was fairly small; it only took about ten minutes to walk through all that remains of the public baths, specifically the hot water room and the warm water room.

Cryptoporticus - but what is it?

The final ancient site we visited was the cryptoporticus, a series of three long tunnels supported by columns now in the basement of the city hall of Arles. It was built in the first century BC as a foundation for the forum of the city and used as storage or as barracks. There were no signs, it was very damp and we were the only people down there (we got in about twenty minutes before closing) and it was kind of eerie. I really have no idea what we were looking at, just that it was Roman!

Funerary statue of Medea about to kill
her children. Why would you put this
on your grave?

The Roman museum in Arles was much more interesting and much better explained. It's about a 25-minute walk from the central city and we got there about 45 minutes before they closed, so we had to kind of race through it. But they've got some fantastic sculptures from various ancient buildings and very cool models of the major Roman remains as they would have looked in ancient times. They also have some very beautiful mosaics found at some of the ritzy ancient villas across the river and there are lots of sarcophagi with amazing sculptural details. It was a great collection of material.

Church of St. Trophime

Pilgrim

Among the non-Roman sites in the city is the church of St. Trophime, built mostly in the 11th and 12th centuries. It has some very well-preserved Romanesque sculptures around the front door which look very different from the Gothic sculptures we saw all over northern France. Inside, there's a chapel chock-full of saints' relics all of them helpfully labeled (although you can't go in, you can just peer through the grate). It's the most I've seen in one place! Also, there are a couple of altars in side chapels that are actually fourth century AD sarcophagi that, at some point in the Middle Ages, were discovered and turned into altars (presumably without the bodies inside!). As we left the church, we saw a guy come in with a walk staff and a huge backpack. He went to the "welcome desk" and it dawned on us that he was making the pilgrimage to the Santiago de Compostella in Spain and was stopping off to get his pass stamped, proving that he had walked most of the way. It was kind of cool to see a modern pilgrim following the same route and seeing the same churches pilgrims did a thousand years ago.

Cloister of St. Trophime.

Attached to the church is a cloister. Half of it was built in the 12th century in Romanesque style and the other half built in the 13th century in Gothic style. The capitals of the columns ringing the cloister are supposed to be quite beautiful and have interesting individually carved figures on them, but because most of the cloister is undergoing renovation, we couldn't see them! We could, however, climb up to the second floor and see the drainage system on the roof that was used to save rain water for use by the canons of the church.

Compare and contrast: Van Gogh....

Reality.

Besides the Roman ruins, Arles is also famous as the town where Vincent van Gogh lived from 1888 to 1889. During that time, he produced many of his most famous paintings. It's also where he famously cut off his ear and was checked into the hospital before leaving town for a mental asylum not far away. Today, Arles has erected little plaques throughout the city marking places van Gogh painted and showing you a copy of the painting (none of his paintings are actually housed in Arles). So we got to see the same view he did when he painted Starry Night Over the Rhone and we walked by the cafe on Place du Forum that he painted as The Night Cafe. We also went to the courtyard of the former hospital where he stayed following the loss of his ear. The courtyard is now painted in bright colors to match a painting van Gogh did of it and the garden is also planted to match the painting.

Van Gogh's hospital.

In all, it was a pretty jam-packed afternoon in the heat of Arles. We headed back to Avignon around eight (after our train was delayed about 20 minutes) for dinner at a tapas restaurant and then bed. The next morning, we set out for the next stop on our circle tour (and another major ancient Roman city): Lyon.

Chapel of relics in Saint-Trophime.

Sarcophagus-altar at Saint-Trophime.