The last place I visited with my friend from Austria before she had to leave was the Musée des Confluences, a natural history / anthropology museum and science center. There's nothing natural about the building though, its a deconstructivist building by the Austrian architectural agency Coop Himmelb(l)au, where Himmelblau means "sky blue" and if you leave the l out it becomes "building". According to Wikipedia it resembles a floating cloud of steel and glass ... which does make sense, but I didn't get it when I was there - I was just too amazed by the architectural design and location.

Speaking of which, the museum is located at the joining of the two rivers of Lyon, the Rhône and the Saône (pronounced Sone), a wonderful sight. What I didn't know from looking at the map though was that it would take me one hour of biking from INSA to get there ... we took the tram back, which took about half an hour and almost made me miss dinner! 

Back to the museum: It has three stories, whereof the topmost is a permanent anthropology exhibition, the middle one temporary exhibitions and workshops, and the ground floor is a shop and boutiques. I was amazed by the depth of the exhibitions, which you could spend half a day in. Yet they were accessible to all people, including little games you could play and videos to watch to understand the concepts that were presented. The permanent exhibitions we visited included one on death and the afterlife (I spent half an hour just watching videos there! wow!), society and our origins (I especially liked that one!). In general, I think I could have spent way more time there than the two and a half hours we did. I'm definitely coming back!