After breakfast, we went to Carte Blanche for our coffee seminar; we’d filled out a questionnaire to help them make the perfect coffee blend for each of us. Our route took us past Chez Louloutte (where we’d dined a few days ago), and I took the opportunity to get a photo of our group before we reached Carte Blanche.

The roaster, Marie, took us through the process of growing, choosing, and roasting coffee (she was very proud of the 6-kilo roaster they used at Carte Blanche) before presenting each of us with our own personal blend, based on answers to their questionnaire. My blend is 86% Papua New Guinea and 14% Brazilian – mostly bitter with a little acidity. I’ll have to see how well I like it when I get home!

We returned to the hotel to pick up our luggage and walked it over to the AmaKristina – the walk was probably less than a mile, but it felt longer! They were serving little sandwiches in the lounge but we chose to go out for lunch before going to the Confluence Museum. We had lunch at Kenbo, a “Pan-Asian” restaurant, and enjoyed it.

We took the tram to the Confluence Museum; the museum is an interesting place, mostly a natural history museum with a good bit of culture thrown in. I really liked the Australian Aborigine art they used to in several of the exhibits.

The setting is amazing, at the confluence of the Saône and Rhône Rivers, and well worth a visit – if we hadn’t been running late, I would have liked to have seen their temporary exhibits as well as the permanent exhibits.

There were signs as we left the museum warning of pickpockets on the tram taking you back to Lyon. While we were waiting for the tram, a gentlemen warned us that “those women” (or maybe “that woman”) were pickpockets.

They weren’t kidding. Just before we got to the first stop from the museum, Diane’s sister-in-law lunged at a woman standing next to Diane and stopped her from extracting Diane’s phone from her purse! After we got off the tram, Diane discovered that the woman had unzipped her purse and had successfully extracted a small bag from it – fortunately, all she got was a couple of pens and some generic Imodium, but it was still unsettling.

We returned to the ship in time for the Welcome Reception and our dinner at the Chef’s Table. Wine flowed freely, and I’ll blame that for any typos or unclear writing tonight!

We took an early walk past the Théâtre des Célestins before going to cooking class at In Cuisine where we made (and ate!) Cervelle de Canut and chicken sauté a La Lyonnaise.

After class, we took the funicular to Fourvière to see the Basilica, the Roman Theatre, and, of course, the view of Lyon from the hill.

We took a different funicular down to Vieux Lyon in time to enjoy the Bateaux Lyonnais Saône river cruise.

This is a statue of Jean Kleberger, the “Good German” (a valet to King Francis I).

We saw more of the riverside art projects; this one is a bit less assertive than the statue we saw a few days ago!

There were several rowing clubs along the river, and their members were busy this afternoon.

Our cruise went as far as the Île Barbe, which has a beautiful private house at its north end and an old monastery on the east side. It is supposed to be one of the most beautiful places in Lyon.

There were even more rowers enjoying the day as we returned to our berth.

I’m not 100% sure, but I think this building was a prison – now it’s a climbing wall!

Lyon boasts more than one building with walls painted as trompe l’oeil artwork; I don’t think this one is as convincing as the Mur des Canute, but it was interesting anyway.

And then we were back to dry land. Tomorrow, we will leave the hotel and go to the AmaKristina to begin our Rhône River adventure…with a night in Lyon.