Museums & other interesting places…

Today Nicolas and I went to the Museum Lumiere which is a museum dedicated to the French brothers who pioneered cinematography.  It’s in an old building in the Mon plasier - Lumiere area of Lyon. It comprises of 4 levels...3 floors and a basement but we were only able to view the ground floor and the basement. The museum consists of an assortment of old cameras and cinematography equipment, from old cameras to viewing glasses, to picture book movies (the ones where you flip the pages and it “animates”), to these things where you spin the carousel and look through the slits and see the picture move. It’s kinda hard to explain without pictures.

Everything was in French and even though we had an English pamphlet we kinda had to just make out what was going on as we went along. They even had some early 3D pictures and a replica of the lumiere’s 360degree panorama which was a big 3m high, 6m round panoramic picture that people could enter and stand inside and see. The guys were really geniuses, even making a balm to treat burns...and they were rich by the time they were 20!

They maintained ownership of their company so they could control how it would grow and evolve and even trained and sent cinematographers to all corners of the planet so they could capture and bring back images of the world and show it to the rest of the world.

For lunch we bought some beignet crevette and spring rolls at a Chinese stall at the market outside the museum. Nic bought a cantelope and we also got some nectarines and white peaches which were so flippen good. Sweet and just at the peak of their flavour.

Then we went up to see the roman amphitheatre and the cathedral St. Jean in Vieux Lyon. We walked around the ruins and in the cathedral, and then we took the tram/lift back down walked back past the market that runs along the river.

I then went out and met with Marlene (I thought her name was Nina but it turn out I was picking up stompies) ( mistaken )  and we went to the park tete d’or and went to the botanical gardens and walked around the zoo where even though I usually am not interested in zoos, this time I got to see some red pandas which I think are just like the Firefox logo, some gibbons and chimps, some giraffes and the coolest part for me, we got to see some live porcupines and some mongoose I think , who were fed dead chicks so I got to watch them chewing on them like a piece of biltong.

We wanted to play some mini golf but it was too late so we settled for having a smoothie and just chatting. Marlene’s mom baked these awesome chocolate fondants that were soooo good. Baked just perfectly so the centre was deliciously gooey while it still held its shape. I devoured them all too quickly...

We then walked around Bellecour and she got me to try some coconut water which tasted like sugar cane water, it was so sweet. By this stage I was so tired from all the walking so I called it a day and we parted and I had my 15min mission home, walking to a soundtrack of some Drum 'n Bass thinking how Lyon wouldn’t be able to handle me with my bass face on.  I would go full retard for sure...

Too tired to do anything else, I crashed as soon as I got home.