Lyon, 4 December 2025

This morning we got up early to met Benjamin Morin, Nathalie and Thierry's son, at a cafe near where he goes to college (he is a senior). We found our way there via metro and a nice walk, and it turns out that the cafe/breakfast area was part of a nice hostel. Benjamin has grown so much, but of course it has been 8 years since we've seen him. His English is quite good (better than my French which I try for a while), though he kept apologizing for it. He is in the final stages of preparing to be a PE teacher, and is apparently an awesome skateboarder (and surfer) who helped design a new skate park in Echiré. He is a very nice young man, and we understand he has a serious girlfriend who will accompany them for winter break skiing this year. Once he graduates, he will be assigned a school somewhere in France for three years, and after that he can choose new location; his girlfriend is also planning to become a teacher, so I hope they can be posted together.

Heading back downtown from a different metro station, we got to use the cogwheel part of the metro for the very hilly areas, which was interesting. Off to the Musée des Beaux-Artes for an exhibit of Courbet, Monet, and Matisse and their interpretations of Etretat.  A lovely exhibit pairing painting with photographs of the area as it transitioned from fishing village to artists' enclave to tourist spot. As always, we patronize the museum cafe (supporting the sector), and Barney has a nice quiche Lorriane, while I had a smoked salmon filled eclair which was new, and squash soup which seems everywhere right now. 

Davidson then  joined us to go to the local history museum, tucked away in a 17th century building and a modern annex. The Lyon Historical Museum has a terrific set of exhibits from its early Roman days through the middle ages and to modern times. It has a really good explanation of the silk industry, which at one time employed almost 100,000 people in the Lyon area, and brought great wealth to the region. We saw a photo of a 19th century silk factory, where young women spent their days with their hands in warm water, soaking the silkworm cocoons and then gently pulling the thread out, to be spun into silk thread and eventually cloth. Whole families were involved in this trade including children, which was of course was underpaid, and the invention of the jacquard weaving loom caused a disruption in the silk workforce similar to the introduction of mechanical looms for wool in England (the Luddites).  We walked in the rain to see the 6-story buildings where the silk-weavers lived in the 19th century, and the 19th century headquarters of their eventual guild. On our way back we saw more of thr light and laser show preparations for the weekend fete.

Back on the metro, and then we reconnected with Edwin for dinner at Cafe Marcelline a few blocks from their apartment. It was a traditional bistro, filled with locals, and we had a lovely dinner. I had a smoked salmon salad, Barney had steak frites, and we shared a dessert.  I can see why Davidson and Edwin have landed here and why they might want to stay ... with financial resources, this is a wonderful place indeed.  We headed back to the apartment early so we could back to be ready to be picked up the next day at 8:00am!