Shops of Lyon

We are one of the fortunate ones who managed to get away, albeit briefly, before the first lockdown back in March. For Valentines weekend we headed for a few nights in Lyon - you might remember that getting back was more stressful than it needed to be as we almost missed the flight. Even now, just typing this, I’m reliving the feelings that brought - we will never cut it so fine again for a flight. Given this year, it will be a fair while before we go anywhere near a flight, I’m sure, but even so.

Lyon was lovely though. We did the usual thing of arriving ‘close enough’ to our hotel and then wandering, or rather, marching through the streets in search of where we were staying. I say marching, as at the start of a break, somehow we always walk much more quickly, by the end and when it’s time to leave everything is a bit more leisurely. More so than normal it would seem on this break, ahem.

herboristerie in lyon

I’d booked a hotel in the old part of town and so we walked past these shops many times - it was no hardship at all really, though.

A french bookshop

I wanted to peer into each and every one of them. Perhaps this one especially…

le comptoir de mathilde

Even those which were no longer in use and full of faded glory drew my attention.

garage du palais
bottles stacked in a shop window

Sometimes it was the content more than than the shopfront that caught my eye.

books in a shop window, with two tiny human models

I still haven’t worked out the significance of those human figures, but if they had a price tag on then I’d be more than interested in acquiring them. And isn’t it peculiar, this is probably the closest I’ve got to browsing shops this year, but it’s something I’m missing - even though it’s not something I do a lot! Probably linked to the fact that we can’t at the moment, and absence making the heart grow fonder as the saying goes. Though I’m sure I’d also hate wandering around a packed shopping area too.

PoCoLo