Author: Taran

Born into a middle-class English family, Taran was educated at a minor UK public-school and graduated from Imperial College, London as a mechanical engineer. He worked variously as a marine engineer, a marine surveyor, a company owner and as an industrial accidents investigator. He is a family man although now divorced from the mother of his two sons. He has travelled the world extensively, often as part of his employment, but also many times simply for the pleasure of experiencing new countries their cultures and their people. As well as calling England his home for much of his life, he is also a citizen of Canada where he lived for seventeen years and has had homes in Nigeria and Kuwait. Now retired, he lives in California, happily married to his second wife, and close to both his sons and his grandchildren. He continues to travel as often as possible and is enjoying his dream of becoming a writer.

A much “kneeded” diversion!

My wife, Celine, and I love to travel, we love to visit new places, we love to wander through strange streets, and meander our way around new towns and villages. In fact we just enjoy going for walks together.

Unfortunately, walking requires healthy legs, healthy legs need good knee joints, and when the knee joints start to creak, all those enjoyable excursions start to lose some of their sparkle. The six months we recently spent investigating Mediterranean Europe, were full of long days of walking and wandering, we saw many wonderful places, strolled through beautiful countryside, meandered through a hundred ancient villages and strode down numerous elegant city streets. However, towards the end of our journey, my love of walking, strolling and meandering began to take second place to the relief of sitting comfortably in some pavement café, partaking of another favourite pastime, drinking coffee, eating patisseries, and people-watching at our leisure. Yes, my knees had finally reached the end of their useful life and the time had come for their replacement.

The decision to go for bilateral total knee replacement surgery had actually been made more than a year earlier, but with our plans for Europe already well advanced, I had decided to put those knees to the final test, and get my money’s worth out of my parents gift. And get my money’s worth I most certainly did. So a couple of months after our return to California, my day to be laid out on the butcher’s slab finally arrived, and on June 1^st I placed myself at the mercy of the competent hands of Dr Lee; and I chose the knock-out anaesthesia option, not having any wish to listen to a bunch of people discussing what they find as my knees were sliced open 4 inches above and below the knee cap.

Six hours later, I awoke to find myself being moved to my overnight room, and a couple of hours after that the first physio-terrorist – sorry –therapist – was getting me out of bed and walking me out into the hallway with the comfort of one of those wheeled walkers in front, and the PT ready to grab hold of a sturdy belt around my waist at the rear. Amazingly, I was walking painlessly on my new knees already!

Progress for the first couple of weeks continued apace, encouraged by a non-stop regimen of exercises, the regular application of heat pads and judicious minimal consumption of pain-killers, especially of the opiates which I really disliked and cut out of my diet as soon as possible. I had hoped that with all the free time I would have on my hands I would be able to write copiously, but I hadn’t bargained for the time that exercise regime would consume, the ongoing effect of many disturbed nights as my knees settled in, or didn’t, or for the discomfort of sitting at a desk. My goal then, and now six weeks later, was to persuade my new knees, and all the disturbed tissues around them, that being able to move from dead straight (0⁰ angle of bend) to way past a right angle (as much as 120⁰), something about which they all conspired to be as awkward as possible. I’m getting there, but the rate of progress has slowed considerably from the euphoria of that first walk to the nurses’ station in the hallway and back again.

So that, dear readers, is why I have written so little in the last few weeks, and I hope I have not lost your interest completely. From today onwards I will do better and try once more to post new blogs a couple of times a week. Please enjoy.

PS No photos to go with this post; my knees were never very photogenic and I reckon pictures of long scars wouldn’t be as interesting as allowing your imaginations to run wild! Suffice to say the long scars are fading fast, and we can start looking forward to our next travel adventure.

Lyon – part five – City of Silk

During the Renaissance, Lyon became very active in the silk trade and this resulted in the city becoming an important industrial town during the 19^th century. The main silk district is on the steep slopes of Croix Rousse, uphill from our house of learning at L’Inflexyon. We walked up the many steps one evening and at the top found a neighbourhood very different from where we were staying at Les Toits de Lyon; it appeared to be quite working-class and not ‘posh’ at all, as we had thought it might have been, being in such a wonderful location with such great views over the city. We were too late in the day to visit the two or three old silk factories that remain open to the public, so, after a brief wander around, we trotted back down the long wide ‘staircase’ of Montée de la Grande-Côte, and into more familiar territory.

However, we did come across other reminders of the silk-trading past of the city during our wanderings at other times. Several small boutiques in an area close to the Opera, such as La Boutique Ineska, were displaying some simply beautiful diaphanous silk dresses which looked wonderful when modeled by my long-limbed bride; in another gallery we visited, we were able to see the process of silk screen printing that produced the wonderful patterns of those garments; and in a small shop on rue de Boeuf, Brochier Soieries 1890, La Boutique, we received, from the very accommodating proprietor, a fascinating demonstration of a small version of the Jacquard machine, invented in 1801, that automated the weaving of the gorgeous patterns in silk that we associate with furnishing fabrics and the richer materials used in the aristocratic gowns and cloaks of old.

The silk industry is also associated with some of the more unusual features of Lyonnaise architecture. With the older parts of the city being built on and around fairly steep hills, most of the main streets of old Lyon run across the slopes, rather than up and down them. To give people living and working on the upper slopes easier direct access to the river, the famous traboules, a series of arched walkways, underground passages and staircases leading down the slopes, were incorporated into the buildings. Whilst there were lots of these traboules, not that many are nowadays easily accessible to the public, especially the underground tunnels which are now mostly closed off and used for storage.

All the same, we were lucky enough in our choice of learning establishment, to find ourselves directly next-door to a fine example of this style of construction;

Passage Thiaffait starts with stairs down from rue Burdeau and ends up opening onto rue René Leynaud. Several of the really rather elegant staircase traboules can also be seen on and around rue du Boeuf (such as La Tour Rose) and rue Saint-Jean in Vieux Lyon. Although we didn’t pursue our research into traboules any further, we came across several guidebooks and many websites dedicated to the subject [www.lyontraboules.net].

And the connection of traboules with the silk trade was . . . ? They provided safe and efficient passage for silk workers to get their wares to and from market unmarred [www.atlasobscura.com/places/traboules-secret-passages].

On finding somewhere to build a new nest . . .

My wife, Celine, and I, a couple of retired European expats, live a life in California that we both feel leaves a lot to be desired. So a few years ago we made the decision to start looking for another country to build our nest anew. As regular readers of International Living, we started our search in a couple of the Central and South American countries that so many writers had been enthusing about, namely Costa Rica and Ecuador. Both had their attributes, but we quickly realised that what we really wanted was to become Europeans in Europe once again, and be back amongst the culture, the history, and people with whom we would have more in common than we do with our Californian neighbours. So, with good memories from earlier visits to the country, and French being our strongest of the romance languages, last September we set off on a six-month intensive study of southern France from Provence in the east across to Aquitaine in the west, with an excursion into Spanish Basque country and short, unscheduled, side trips to the Italian Riviera and Spain’s Costa Brava.

This was, however, no extended holiday, for we planned to spend four to six weeks in three or four destinations where, as far as it is possible to do so in short-term rented accommodation, we would live like locals, buying our supplies in the local shops and markets, and also scout around the local areas to get the bigger picture.

We arrived without clearly defining what we wanted from a nesting site, preferring to discover what would attract us both. And so we spent six months exposing ourselves to a variety of locales, getting excited by some more than others. Occasionally, we would get perilously close to making rushed decisions about buying properties, whilst totally ignoring our promises to ourselves to do nothing rash, to rent for a year before deciding to buy, to always seek English speaking advice and guidance, and to be absolutely certain how much we could afford before making an offer!

We started our journey with a month in Lyon where we had found a good school of languages to bone up on our French; it wasn’t, however, a potential nesting site due to its rather cold winter weather. Our nest-hunting really began with six weeks in Provence, but they passed by without temptation; we simply never found anywhere that made us want to settle. It was in Ospedaletti, just outside San Remo, the self styled capital of la Riviera de las Flores, at the western end of the Italian Riviera, where Delilah first tried her tricks. We had a week to fill between our pre-booked stay in Lorgues, a Provence village popular with expats, and a three week house-sit in Montpellier, and had decided to spend it exploring the nearest bit of Italy.

We had found an apartment in Ospedaletti, just 30m from the shore with a spacious balcony and a spectacular view over the Mediterranean. We were entranced, and not just with the view. The town itself had a certain faded elegance and charm, and was wonderfully unspoilt after the developmental excesses we had seen all along the French Riviera to the west. We drove into San Remo a couple of times, a city that seemed to tick many of our boxes, culture, architecture, and good shopping, and had the air of an honest working town without the overt touristic ostentatiousness of its French neighbours. The hook had been set and it only took a few words with our Italian landlord, who just happened to be in the real-estate business, before he was driving us around showing us what could be bought for the €350,000 we thought we could afford. And after three ‘duds’, too much renovation required, lousy view, no parking space, and one very nice apartment that, unfortunately, was way outside our budget, we explained to Simone that perhaps we should just ‘keep in touch’. We liked the location but none of his offerings really suited our needs. But Simone was not to be put off quite so easily.

Now that he understood better what we were looking for – somewhat surprising as we still weren’t really sure ourselves – Simone had one more place that he would like to show us which he was absolutely certain would be just perfect. And so the following day, on the morning of our departure, he took us for a short walk along the rocky shoreline, around a slight promontory and there before us was a three storey building set in amongst a few pine trees. The apartment in question was on the first floor, had two large bedrooms, two bathrooms, a decent living room, an adequate kitchen opening onto a small garden, and a long enclosed verandah looking straight at the sea with more or less the same lovely views we had been enjoying for the last week. And the price was pretty well exactly what we had in mind. Of course we thought it was wonderful. Sure we would need to spend some money refurbishing the kitchen, but that was work I could easily handle myself. We would have our own parking space directly beneath the verandah, it was well off the main road, there was no public access to the property, and there were only two other occupants in the building so no housing association complications. There seemed to be some question as to whether or not the windows around the verandah had been the subject of planning permission, but the other two apartments had been similarly modified and no questions had been asked. A friend of Simone’s owned one of the other apartments, and, surprise, Simone also knew the seller very well. It all sounded very good and was our ideal nest in so many ways. To say we were tempted is to put it mildly, until the bombshell landed. The owner had already received one offer at the asking price, but would accept a cash offer if we wanted to seal the deal. Our minds raced furiously as we mentally worked out that we could indeed raise the cash, but at the same time little niggling doubts began to foment.

It was really just as well that we were leaving later that morning. So as we walked back to Simone’s apartment and he helped us carry our suitcases to the car, we explained our dilemma and agreed we would get back to him that evening, once we had arrived in Montpellier. But in our hearts we knew we had to calm down and not be blinded by such a little gem of a home. We talked about little else during our drive back along the A8 autoroute, and by the time we were arriving in the outskirts of Montpellier as dusk fell, we knew that we had been very close to making a huge mistake. We had not spoken to an English speaking solicitor, we had only a vague knowledge of the Italian system of buying and selling property, we weren’t even one hundred percent sure of the exchange value of our savings in UK and USA. But it had been a real shock for us to learn how impetuous we could be.

Fishing boats on the beach at Calella de Palafrugell

You’d think after that we would have been far more principled in our house-hunting escapades, but you’d be wrong to think that we would control our instincts better. Our next short, unplanned stay was a week in the pretty, old fishing village of Calella de Palafrugell on the Spanish Costa Brava. Your scribe had stayed there with his parents some fifty years previously and was surprised as well as delighted to find that it had not suffered the ravages of over-development that is such an epidemic along much of the Spanish Mediterranean coast. The small beaches in the middle of the village and the many isolated rocky coves where I remembered swimming in the clear azure sea with my father, were all just as delightful as ever. Walking the narrow footpath twisting its way among the rocky outcrops between the coves along the shoreline around the bay and on into the neighboring village of Llafranc, was a blissful way of getting our daily exercise. Even Palafrugell, the town four kilometres inland, where we would have to go for all our shopping and medical needs, was pleasant enough. Open countryside was all around, the handsome city of Girona was only an hour’s drive inland, and the port of Palamos just a few kilometres down the coast. And Calella itself was so wonderfully clean and quiet, actually rather too quiet we realised as the days went by, and the view of the sea from our balcony was again beautiful even though this time the sea was further away. But wouldn’t it be a wonderful place to live, we kept saying to each other. No tourists for nine or ten months of the year, fine countryside all around, we simply had to make contact with the local real estate office, and just see what might be available. And so the process began once more, though we didn’t get quite so carried away this time. Again we chatted with our landlord, from whom we learned that nearly 75% of the properties in the village, were owned by Spaniards from big cities like Barcelona and Madrid, who came to Calella for holidays and weekends. So there was not much chance of having year-round friendly neighbours. But still we ‘oohed’ and ‘aahed’, while ‘umming’ at the same time, as we weighed up the pros and cons of life in a small, but very beautiful, holiday community, still without the benefit of local legal knowledge and advice, and once again getting ourselves very excited about a place we had been in for less than a week.

Who wouldn’t want to live near a beach like this – Calella again, seemingly unchanged from sixty years ago!

They say about love that when it arrives you will know about it without question, that your instincts have a very real sense of having found the right life-partner. But, just like loving a person, loving a place still has to be given time to grow and develop gradually. All the same, it is just as easy to fall blindly in love with a beautiful environment, as it is to believe the person with whom you danced the previous night away is quite without fault.

So we determined to spend the rest of our six months being far more pragmatic when looking at properties. But, like “the best laid schemes o’mice an’ men” our good intentions did go a ‘wee bit awry’. Nothing really grabbed us during the next five weeks, on a home-exchange in a very small village in the foothills of the Pyrenees, where the December winds blew overly cool and big city culture was just too far away. But, as February and early spring arrived we found ourselves in Spanish Basque country staying in the little fishing port of Getaria, living in a very smart modern apartment high above a small sandy cove, enthralled by our view of the waves from the Bay of Biscay crashing on the rocks to right and left. There was an awful lot that was right about this environment. The village was tucked below a hillside atop of which began miles of green rolling countryside. The town of Zarautz, five minutes drive along the coast road, had all the amenities we could want, the beautiful small seaside city of San Sebastian was half an hour’s drive to the east and the much revitalized, port city of Bilbao, with all its culture, an hour to the west. The countryside was beautiful in all directions, and French Basque country just an hour away. And, the final Delilah touch, two or three of the apartments in our building were for sale. So we just had to go and see. We actually ended up looking at four apartments in the end. The first two weren’t quite right, and the next two were superb, but, sadly, way above our ‘budget’. And anyway, none of them had a garden, something which your scribe feels very strongly about.

Still, it was early days, and as we had several more days in the area we decided to investigate the property market in more depth; and that was when we discovered that single-family homes with small gardens are somewhat of a rarity in that part of Spain. It’s something to do with planning regulations, which severely restrict the sale of agricultural land for development, a virtue for one who loves the countryside more than bricks and mortar, but it does explain the Spanish obsession with high-rise apartment buildings that tend to spoil so many of the small fishing villages along the coast. You understand, by this stage we were starting to think a lot more carefully. But then again, if we were to sell our condo in California, then we could actually afford the loveliest of the penthouse duplex apartments in our building, and it did have a terrace large enough to grow quite a lot of plants and vegetables, and the views were beautiful, and it was such a friendly village and . . . and . . . so on.

The Getaria apartment building that really tempted us – the big blue glass fronted box at the right of the bay. Magnificent views out over the Bay of Biscay, and the sound of the Atlantic surf!

Yes, the tentacles of temptation were slowly drawing us in once again, and dangerous thoughts were becoming ever stronger. Something inside of me was beginning to feel a slight sense of failure, that our six months was drawing a blank; even after visiting and seeing so many beautiful places, we seemed to be unable to find that ideal nesting place. Would we ever do so?

There was still French Basque country to explore, which we were able to do from our base in Getaria. Hendaye and St.Jean de Luz were two small towns very close to the frontier, each of which in their own way, proved very attractive, and so we wasted no time in visiting two or three local ‘immobilieres’ (real estate agents). Their response was very positive, especially now that our ‘budget had risen to €500,000! We found the French Basque housing market to be very different from the Spanish. The concept of single-family homes is very much the norm and we were immediately able to visit four or five homes, all of which could have possibilities, but just two of which really made us stop and think very hard. The first, up one of the hills on the outskirts of Hendaye, was in many ways the most suitable property we had seen. Three spacious bedrooms, two bathrooms, a large open-plan kitchen/living room, beautiful Spanish mosaic floors everywhere, except for the oak floors in the bedrooms, a large southwest facing balcony with views towards both the mountains and the sea (unfortunately split by the outsize chimney of the house below!), a fair sized garden, an enormous undeveloped basement, large enough to subdivide into a dance floor, a workshop and a garage, a conversion-ready loft, and the price was within budget. By this stage though, we were being ultra-cautious, we needed to know more about living in Hendaye, in fact we needed to stick to our guns and rent for at least six months before we made a decision to purchase. So, rather dejectedly, we walked away from it.

We also visited St Jean de Luz and decided that it too was every bit as charming as we had read, but property prices in the town itself put it out of the range of even our ‘new’ budget. All the same, we continued looking, met a very helpful estate agent in Urrugne, a commune a few kilometres inland, who showed us a couple more houses, one of which was a beautifully built home in the countryside with a well kept garden and views of the mountains, being sold by an elderly couple who had built the home themselves some thirty years earlier. Again we had to turn away, and console ourselves with the knowledge that we had at least found an area we would happily return to one day and try the nest-renting process.

But then again, perhaps we should look at Italy more closely, and what about this little country of Portugal, which everyone says is such a fine place for retirement? And that, dear readers, will be another story.

Footnote: Looking for illustrations for this post has made me realise how difficult it is to take photographs that effectively convey the true sense of a place. We took a few thousand photographs during our travels but hardly a single one adequately shows you why we were so tempted. So when this article was published by Live and Invest Overseas I was quite relieved to see that they used stock photos. They also edited it in places, quite effectively if I’m honest!

Lyon – part four – A smörgåsbord of museums

Our time in Lyon was much more than language learning, food and markets. Among the seemingly limitless attractions in Lyon, we spent many enjoyable hours visiting just a sample of its wonderful museums.

At the ultra-modern end of the scale, there is the excellent Musée des Confluences. Built on reclaimed land at the point where the rivers Rhône and Saône come together, this highly futuristic, stainless steel and glass edifice houses a permanent four part exhibit on the Ascent of Man – Origines, Espèces, Sociétés and Éternités – as well as temporary exhibits, all of which were well designed, and beautifully presented. We hadn’t expected to spend the whole afternoon there but the combination of La Dance Moderne – a well choreographed series of videos and music on screens throughout a large hall, and an Exploration of the Antarctic with some quite amazing underwater film footage of penguins and seals, meant we had little time left for Les Chaussures de la Monde and Potieres d’Afrique, before grabbing a quick coffee and a snack in the unusual – unusual for France that is – self-service cafe, before the museum doors were locked behind us, and it was time to take the tram back to Place Bellecour.

The comprehensive and extensive system of trams and buses and underground trains operated by Metro de Lyon is another aspect of Lyon that makes the city so easy to explore. Although we walked most of our time there, we did take a tram and the underground a couple of times and found them comfortable and clean, and more importantly, on schedule. To get a better feel for the city as early as we could, on our first weekend we also made use of the hop-on/hop-off City Tour Bus. This really came into its own, for your scribe’s old knees at least, after a long, tiring, but fascinating walk around the amazingly ornate late nineteenth century La Basilique Notre Dame de Fourvière and the two beautifully preserved Roman theatres right next door.

The Fourvière hill was where the first Christian community was created in the country of Gaul. The hill’s dedication to the Virgin Mary supposedly saved the old city from the ravages of the Black Death in the fourteenth century, as well as the cholera epidemic in 1832 and the Prussian invasion in 1870; sceptics please remain silent! Certainly the marvellous view of the city from the top of the hill makes any pilgrimage to the Basilica very worthwhile.

One of three entertainment-oriented museums that we found really interesting was the Musée Lumière that we visited with our fellow students, as one of the cultural events arranged by Inflexyon, the language school we attended during our first couple of weeks in the city. Housed in the majestic Villa Lumière on the appropriately named rue du Premier-Film, in the Monplaisir district of the 8e arondissement, this fine collection pays homage to the brothers Louis and Auguste Lumière, and describes their invention and development of the ‘moving picture’. The exhibits include several of the first movies ever made, on subjects as diverse as the children at family gatherings, steam trains passing through Lyon station, young men doing physical jerks and some classic slap-stick comedy routines. There was also a fine selection of their very early camera equipment as well as some insights into their early experiments at colour photography and videography. This was particularly interesting to two people whose home is not very far from Hollywood, an address that may never have achieved its fame without the innovative thinking of the Lumière brothers!

To better understand the history and development of Lyon, we visited the Musée Gadagne in the St Jean quarter of Vieux Lyon. Located in the Hôtel Gadagne, the early sixteenth century home of the brothers Gadagne, the building houses two museums, La Musée de l’Histoire de Lyon and the aforementioned Musée des Marionettes du Monde. This latter whimsical exhibition celebrates the birth of the famous glove puppet, Guignol, and his comedic friends, Gnafron and Madelon, the predecessors of the Punch and Judy shows that many of us remember from our childhood. Guignol was the invention of Lyon resident Laurent Mourguet, an out-of-work silk weaver, turned peddler and tooth puller, who started ‘puppeteering’ to distract his tooth-aching customers from the early 19^th century terrors of primitive dentistry. Less entertaining, but of much greater historical interest, the story of Lyon is long and fascinating, going back to Roman times, and the history museum does it more than justice. Housed in the original Hotel Gadagne built by the Florentine family Gadagni in the early sixteenth century and, with a lot of stairs to climb between four floors of exhibits, it requires a fair degree of stamina and determination to see and read everything; however, the visit is well worth the effort. And, as a final reward, there is a very pleasant little cafe in a roof top garden, which in days gone by was a small urban vineyard.

Completing the portfolio of entertainment-oriented museums in this fascinating city, there is the unusual collection of exhibits that comprise le Musée Miniature et Cinéma, deux passions, deux collections, created by the American miniaturist Dan Ohlman. Housed in the celebrated seventeenth century Maison des Advocats, close to the St Jean Cathedral, this eclectic mix of bizarre, and fairly gruesome, cinematic props,

along with a collection of very impressive miniature models of house and shop interiors, both real and imagined, some of which have been used in major Hollywood movies, makes for an hour of fascination to satisfy all ages and interests.

If none of these museums strike a chord, art lovers can choose from the Musée des Beaux Arts, the Musée d’Art Contemporain and the Musée des Tissus et Musée des Arts Decoratifs, students of ancient history have the Musée de la Civilisation Gallo-Romaine adjacent to the two Roman theatres on Fourvière hill, booklovers might enjoy the Musée de l’Imprimerie, and budding anthropolgists should take in the Musée Africain de Lyon. A veritable smorgasbord for those who love displays of “all-things museum-related”, after all, in one way or another, there is a “museumist” in all of us – thank you www.museumist.com for that delightful confabulated word!

Lyon – part three – Markets and Patisseries

Apart from our disappointments with the couple of bouchons we dined at, the food scene in Lyon was not by any means a disappointment overall. We were intending to live and eat like locals as far as possible throughout our journey, so we didn’t consider eating out very often. We decided to enjoy exploring the street markets when we got up early enough on market day, the traiteurs, the boulangeries and the patisseries, seeking out the various shops selling Bio products, and generally getting to know what was available and how satisfying the home-cooked food side of life would be in the places we were exploring. And Lyon was a good place to start this research.

We managed one Sunday morning visit to a wonderful street market, the Marché Sainte-Antoine Célestins on Quai des Célestins beside the Saône, and downriver from the Marché aux Bouquinistes, which is also a must for French-speaking bibliophiles (though don’t make my mistake and ask one of the vendors if you can look at a book that is near the bottom of a pile of books, unless you are a really serious potential buyer!). Our second day in Lyon, as we started to get our bearings walking south towards Lyon Confluence, we found ourselves on Place Bellecour, where we came upon the most wonderful traiteur, Maison Pignol, from whence we struggled back to our digs loaded with such delights as terrine canard rouge, two types of jambon, quiche, beet salad, ratatouille, plus goodness knows what else, all of which, once we had carried them back up the 150 steps to our roof-top eyrie, were every bit as tasty as they looked in the immaculate refrigerated display cases; and which continued to satisfy our taste buds for the best part of the following week!

Street markets are of course an integral part of every French community, but so are boulangeries and patisseries and again Lyon was no slouch in this latter regard, tempting us with delicious custard filled Royals, or millefeuilles, and my favourite tartes aux pommes, seemingly at every turn in the street, and ensuring the ever-ready availability of slightly warm, yeasty-smelling fresh bread, of many more types than just the quintessential baguette.

The street markets of Lyon are much more than simply food, household wares, bric-à-brac and old books, as we discovered a couple of times when visiting the square outside St Jean Cathedral. Our first surprise there one Sunday morning was the Tapinieres du Vieux Lyon, a fair celebrating the ceramic arts. Every imaginable kind
of ceramics were on sale, from fine jewellery to one twelfth size pottery tractors and steam boilers, by artists of both highly talented and decidedly crude skills, some of which we could have happily lived with but many we were glad to be living without! However, we did end up with beautiful crafted, matching, surrealist fish pendant and earrings as our memoire of the day. Another visit to the same location a couple of weeks later, revealed a thriving marché des antiquités et brocante, an ideal place to browse if looking to furnish and decorate a small apartment on a budget.