One of our learnings from travel  – you know that you love a city when you find yourself planning your next visit – even before your current  stay has been completed. As our train hurtles through Alpine villages of southern France to Bergamo via Milan, it’s easy to be sentimental. Yet, this has certainly been our experience of this small slice of France. Whilst we’ve taken root in Lyon, predominantly, we’ve also poked our noses into Annecy and, on Tuesday, Avignon: once the city of popes (well seven popes and two anti popes, just to make the story more interesting.)

Avignon is a cobblestoned, narrow alleyed, wandering type of place – renowned for its arts – music and theatre,  as well as its chequered, papal past. The Mediterranean feel is strong through its olive trees, lavender, and the fusion of Italian and Franco fare. We even managed to find gelato with ease … a must on a 34-degree day, resplendent with hot breezes. I tried in vain to find that bridge … the one we sang about in Mrs Moneypenny’s Year 8 French class. Instead, I found Lucca-esque city walls and more eateries than one might find on a stroll through our beloved Grand Central. Ironically, we were drawn to a Vietnamese cafe in a narrow alleway –  craving fresh salads and the flavours of the east … a reprieve from those delciously rich creamy cheeses and must-have pastries of which we have had more than our fill.

Yet, the highlight was walking in the footsteps of those religious giants, through their papal enclave, imagining, as one does, the pomp, ceremony, and power that inhabited those walls in the 14th century.  It was King Phillip IV of France who forced the move of the papacy from Rome to France. Phil number four had previously arrested and ‘mistreated’ Pope Boniface VIII, causing his death.  The next pope, Benedict XI conveniently died after only a few months, (a bit like Vladimir’s generals who keep falling out of windows), so Phillip then forced his own nominee Clement V to be elected.  Clem had a French girlfriend and refused to move to Rome, so he and Phil moved the whole papal enclave to Avignon in 1309, where it remained for the next 67 years. By then, Phil had passed away, and they all moved back to Rome. Except for the two anti popes, they stayed in Avignon.

Our final day was spent in Lyon’s old town, ascending and descending its many long and relentlessly steep staircases.  My children, if only you had seen your father bounding up the 1,253 steps to the Basillica – then descending those same stairs with such athletic grace and prowess.  It would have been a proud moment for both you and my Rosewood cricket coach – Arnold Reick had you seen me – enough to bring a tear or two.

Our delerium caused us to stumble down more stairs – a steep spiral staircase (of course), which led us to a cellar restaurant for lunch.  Here we dined on Lyonnaise specials – pike quenelles, coq au vin, and french onion soup – because when in Rome (or, in this case, Lyon), one simply must. Myrl would have been impressed. After our meal, we staggered up onto the cobblestones streets, amid the silk shops where one could spend a small fortune – we resisted. It proved to be photographic heaven – with the bluest of skies and the fast running Saone River, adjacent. To complete our last hours, we snuck back to La Boite a Cafe – the scene of some seriously good coffee and the spot where we have wiled away an hour or so, most mornings. The crew are as committed as those at our local coffee haunt, Banter, we enjoyed their insights into France – and their emphatic views on why Lyon is so superior to Paris. Good old-fashioned parochialism doesn’t just exist in State of Origin matches.

Recently, a journalist called Rosewood, ‘a suburb of  Ipswich’, I must admit it raised my ire and my parochial eyebrows more than a tad.  Now, that particular scribbler would probably prefer Paris to Lyon , the Brisbane Ekka to the Rosewood Show, calamari at a fancy Mooloolaba Esplanade restaurant over Johnny Cassimatis’s fish and chips wrapped in the hallowed newsprint of ‘ The Queensland Times’, and eaten in the park at Mason’s Gully: sacre bleu! Perhaps reading the Cunnington-Smythe oracles might be just what this clearly delusional chap needs????

Adieu belle Lyon, we are missing you already…

Farley and Lady C-S