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 li
ved 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.