Lyon
"In Lyon, the question is never whether to eat well — it is how many courses you can survive."
Lyon is the city that taught France how to eat. This is not hyperbole — it is history. The bouchon lyonnais, a type of restaurant unique to this city, serves a cuisine so rich, so unapologetically carnivorous, so rooted in the traditions of the silk workers and market traders who invented it, that a proper Lyon lunch can leave you incapable of dinner. I say this from experience. The quenelles de brochet (pike dumplings in crayfish sauce), the tablier de sapeur (breaded tripe), the salade lyonnaise with its poached egg and lardons, the cervelle de canut (silk worker’s brains — actually herbed fresh cheese) — this is food that was designed to fuel people through physical labor, served now to people whose only exertion is the walk from the restaurant to the nearest park bench for recovery.
The Vieux Lyon — the Renaissance old town at the foot of Fourvière hill — is one of the largest Renaissance neighborhoods in Europe, a labyrinth of traboules (covered passageways that connect streets through the interiors of buildings) that were used by silk merchants, then by the Resistance during World War II, and now by visitors who push open unmarked doors and discover courtyards, spiral staircases, and centuries of architectural history hidden behind ordinary facades.
The Presqu’île — the peninsula between the Rhône and the Saône — is the city’s commercial heart, with the Place Bellecour (one of the largest public squares in Europe), the Opéra (its modern glass barrel vault sitting atop a 19th-century facade), and the streets around Rue Mercière where the restaurants concentrate with a density that would be suspicious anywhere else but in Lyon feels simply like common sense.
Fourvière crowns the city — the Basilica of Notre-Dame de Fourvière, a 19th-century confection of marble, mosaic, and gold that the Lyonnais either love or mock (they call it “the upside-down elephant”), sits on the hill where the Roman city of Lugdunum once stood. The Gallo-Roman museum and amphitheater are next door, and the view from the esplanade — the city below, the Alps on the horizon on a clear day — is the best panorama in eastern France.
The Halles de Lyon Paul Bocuse is the covered market named for the city’s most famous chef, and it is the place where Lyon’s culinary identity is most concentrated. The charcuterie stalls, the cheese merchants, the pastry shops turning out praline tarts (a Lyon specialty: almonds and sugar, pink-tinted, caramelized), the oyster bars that open at 8am — this is where chefs shop and where visitors begin to understand that in Lyon, food is not an interest. It is an identity.
When to go: April to June or September to October. The Fête des Lumières in December (four nights of light installations across the city) is extraordinary and worth braving the cold.