This weekend, the journées de la patrimoine (Days of cultural heritage) took place - they are actually an europe-wide occurrence (or maybe just in the french-speaking part!). Almost all museums are free and popular monuments are opened up to the public, for example the city hall. It was the first thing we visited, and you'll find lots of photos of it on my instagram soon ... 

After our bags were checked at the entrance, we joined the queue, which moved fast but was present throughout the building. Constructed in the 18th century, almost every hall is furbished extravagantly and there's even a ballroom decorated entirely in gold and glitter! The city hall also has a so called glockenspiel or carillon (that are the translations used, i looked it up, one is german and one french) which was played the whole day and produced a lovely soundscape. 

For lunch, we went to the gallo-roman museum where we did a cool questionnaire probably intended for families (it wasn't easy!), which led to a small buffet where one could try roman food. After filling up adequately, we turned to the second stand, where one could fabricate their own roman meat sauce out of dates, various spices and a few drops of roman fermented fish sauce. It tasted great when eaten with bread and salami! 

In the afternoon, we queued about half an our at the opera, for a tour which had about the same length. We were able to visit the dance rehearsal hall at the top, where one can see all of Lyon! On the photo, you don't really see that much of it, but hey, I wan't my friends to be represented on the blog too ;) We didn't visit anything else after that, since it was a very hot day and we were exhausted from standing too long in the sun as well.