What do you do on a rainy day in Lyon? We spent much of it at the Aquarium de Lyon, a short and only slightly-terrifying Uber ride from our hotel.
We were at a slight disadvantage at the Aquarium, since almost all of the signage was in French (signs describing fish did give the common name in English as well as French, but that was about it). So were the talks – we got there just in time for a talk about sharks, but quickly realized that our time would be better spent looking at fish. And tortoises. And coral.
We took a much less terrifying ride back to the hotel and had lunch at Maker of Stories, a pub near the hotel. The food was OK, but the service was quite slow, so we didn’t finish eating until well after 3.
Our fearless leader Dave Natale arrived while we were eating, bringing our Lyon Cards with him. The cards were waiting for us in our rooms; we put them to immediate use by going to the Lyon Printing Museum because it was close to our hotel and I thought 90 minutes would be more than enough time to see everything.
I was right about it being close, but I was wrong about only needing 90 minutes; the exhibits were fascinating (and labeled in French and English). I saw almost all of the permanent exhibits but had to rush through the last gallery, and I ignored their temporary exhibit completely. The permanent exhibits take you through the history of printing and books, starting with scrolls and ending with PDFs. I was particularly taken by the composing station and the Polyglot Bible (Hebrew, Latin, French, and Greek, with the occasional bit of Aramaic thrown in for good measure).
I could have included a photo of their exhibit of IBM Selectric Composer type balls, but that would have been silly.
We wandered around the area for a while after the museum closed and eventually decided we were hungry enough to have a little dinner. There were only a few places open, I guess because it’s Sunday. We considered Le Republique and Le Paradis du Fruit but neither of them called to us; we also walked past Five Guys and McDonald’s without stopping.
We wound up at Forno Nobile for pizza – it was even better than the pizza we’d had yesterday!
