Primavera Europae

Post scriptum 3: Top 10

It’s pretty much impossible to select and rank best experiences from a month long trip in varied locations - but I did it anyway. ;) In order to try to sum things up and create some sort of a closure for the blog too. So, here’s a list of top 10 experiences from a month in the European spring:

1. Kleine Scheidegg - Truly epic landscape at the height of 2km was one of the strongest experiences I’ve ever encountered traveling
2. Rome - On previous trip 10 or so years ago I hadn’t realized how wonderful city this really is. Not just the amazing amount of history, but the even fellinesquely lively nightlife, great food & wine and contemporary culture make Rome one of the greatest cities in the whole world.
3. Montreux - Absolutely clear blue sceneries of Lake Geneva & the Alps
4. Andermatt - St. Moritz - Bernina Diavolezza train ride - Hard to choose from all the gorgeous train rides in Switzerland, but this one had probably the most varied sceneries among some of the most stunning ones
5. Bologna - Surprisingly urban, modern & artistic vibes in gorgeous red-brick old town setting. One of the places from this trip I definitely want to return to!
6. Lyon - Large city with the heart of a little town, France at it’s best!
7. Siena - Still one of the most beautiful Italian cities
8. Perugia - Eccentric mixture of medieval castles, renaissance palaces and early 1900s buildings on a hilltop setting with a lively university scene
9. Avignon - Fascinating mediaval buildings with zig-zagging narrow streets filled with inviting restaurants and cafes
10. Nice - A city that seems to really love food. Throw in world-famous sea views and some great art collections and you’ve got a perfect destination for a long weekend.

This compilation is very probably the final post to this blog, so to keep up to date on my photos in the future you should look me up on Flickr and follow me on Twitter for generic ramblings and occasional insights.

Lyon

So I finally did find an English speaking dentist in Lyon with lots of googling - apparently American embassies keep publicly available lists of English speaking doctors in various countries (or at least in France they do). That list had 3 dentists for Lyon - first 2 on the list did not speak any English at all, at least the receptionists on the phone didn’t. The 3rd one finally did, and so I had an appointment with a dentist who speaks “a little bit of English” in the suburbs of Lyon. I hate going to dentist even in normal circumstances, so needless to say I was pretty freaked out about this situation: an acute toothache combined with possible language problems. Luckily the pains had subsided a bit already by themselves already.

The location turned out to be just a quick metro trip away from the center, neighbor to the Musee Lumiere even! I took that as a good omen and walked in with slightly less stress. ;) The doctor was a cute mademoiselle who talked English well enough. She played Hercule Poirot of dental care for an hour trying to locate the cause for the pains, but didn’t find anything mentionable. After couple of quick fixes to issues that probably had nothing to do with the pain, I was let go. Even if the pains hadn’t completely disappeared I was overwhelmingly relieved that there was no need to pull anything out out of my mouth or something else drastic that would’ve compromised my travel plans and/or caused more blood, sweat and tears. And to top it of, the hour at the dentist cost no more than 21€ - and that’s a privately operated dentist, not public healthcare. Would have cost at least 5 times more in Finland.

Given the A-OK on dental health I decided to switch my continuous dosage from Paracetamols to Pastis, beer and red wine with a hope that those would cure any remaining pains just as efficiently and at least much more pleasurably!

OK, enough about the teeth. Lyon is large city, 2nd in France right after Paris so it feels like a real metropolis - with a heart of a cute little town. Geographically resembling New York very much: the center situated in an island between two rivers, and spreading large areas of dense population to mainland. I think the photo set over-represents the cute side of the city, there was also a more urban and modern side to the city but that didn’t make  it to the pictures. All and all it feels that I just scratched the surface of Lyon in two afternoons and one night, there would’ve been easily more to explore for couple of days at least. But I have a bad case of wanderlust going on, restless to stay in one place much longer than a night. So many places still to get to during the remaining two or so weeks of the trip!

Vive le cinéma!

This is where it all began, in Lyon. Cinema, that is. Here the Lumiere brothers had home, offices and a factory - the very same factory whose workers were captured in the first ever film recorded. There’s a really fascinating Musée Lumière housed in the former home of the Lumiere family (right next to where the factory used to be also, but that has been since demolished) - lots of old original equipment from the turn of the century (from various techniques ranging from 360 degree panoramas to 3D) together with family photos and memorabilia. I hadn’t realized that the Lumiere company also basically started photojournalism by sending out groups of people all over the world to record the events and everyday life of people in countries from Switzerland to Egypt to Morocco to India etc. What an amazing life it must have been in those days to be able travel the world photographing and cinematographing foreign cultures! And the Lumiere company also were the very first ones to capture color photos. To see turn-of-the-century era in colors seems to bring the time and people to life in almost magical way compared to the b&w we’ve used to be seeing.

Lyon has not forgotten its long heritage with cinema: there’s also a surprisingly good collection of movie props, sets, models, miniatures, animatronics etc from various European and American well-known movies. So Musée des Miniatures et Décors du Cinéma is definitely an imagination-inspiring place to visit for cinephiles such as myself. Again one can only wonder what a wonderful job it must be to design spaceships, bring to life ancient Roman warrior costumes and to explode miniature buses on a daily basis. Somehow seeing those artifacts and thinking about all the people who worked hard for those to make the dreams come alive on screen made me love and appreciate film as a creative form even more….

There was also a large collection of non-cinematic miniature scenes in the same museum, with lots of cutesy and somewhat boring dollhouse-kind-of stuff but also some really striking, artistic miniatures especially from a guy called Dan Ohlman. Stylewise Ohlman’s work was very cinematic even though they had no direct connection to any movies, and many also resembled great still photographs - but were all hand-crafted with painstaking amount of details on top of clearly great artistic vision. I had never before thought of miniatures as an art form, but after seeing Ohlman’s pieces I must update my perspective.

Hôtel du Dauphin, Lyon. 99€

Phew, it was really hard to find a hotel in Lyon in one day’s notice! Almost everything was fully booked for at least couple of upcoming days and the remaining rooms had prices raised to ridiculous levels - even the crappiest dumps nobody seemed to recommend on Tripadvisor had single rooms in triple digits for the night. But the toothache didn’t want me to wait any longer, so had to almost double my hotel budget for Lyon. Luckily the hotel choice at least was a good one with that price - great location right in the center, walking distance from train station, nice & clean room.