Walk round the market, La Croix-Rousse, and lunch at Le Cintra

On Sunday morning, it was back to the cafe for breakfast, and then we decided to go and have a look at the Marché Saint Antoine, along the bank of the Saône.

Not only the produce for sale looked great, but the atmosphere was very congenial - purposeful and upbeat. Why don't we have markets like that here? From time to time I haul myself over to Marylebone farmers' market on a Sunday morning, and in fact did so this morning. But I always find it quite a depressing experience - the range and quality of the produce is nothing like as good, it's eyebleedingly expensive, and worst of all, you're surrounded by people with children called Tarquin. I can cope with it for about two minutes max, and today, as usual, I couldn't wait to get the hell out of there. By contrast, the Marché Saint Antoine was a delightful place to spend half an hour and would be high on my list of reasons to move to Lyon (after wine pigs and proximity to Antic Wines). We weren't able to buy anything, since we didn't have any picnic gear with us, but thought we should get a self-catering apartment next time, in order to take full advantage.

After that, we explored the Croix-Rousse area which is another hill, close to where we'd been the previous evening. Here we discovered the remains of a Roman amphitheatre.

We then continued up the hill to the Place de la Croix-Rousse, where we had a Ricard in a pavement cafe that seemed to be doing good business. It was very sunny and there was a distinct possibility of spontaneous human combustion, so I was glad to go back down the hill into the shade. 

We walked along Rue des Capucins and discovered another natural wine shop which was closed, then ended up near the Opera. By this stage we were quite peckish, so when we came to another square with a restaurant that looked half-decent, we decided to go for it, but to sit inside where it was cool. This turned out to be Le Cintra. 

It had a sort of faded grandeur that we found appealing, and was clearly the place to take an elderly relative. Old-school, in other words, which suited me and G just fine.

We had a two course lunch - some fish and couscous...

... and a fine bottle of white Saint-Joseph.

For pudding, G had this amazing soupe de fraises. Soup seems an odd choice of word - we might call it a smoothie I suppose, but serving it in a bowl did work very well. I thought it was something I might be able to make at home, possibly with the aid of the blender that has stood unused for the past 5 years.

I had a Cafe Gourmand, which was perfectly nice, but as usual, G's choice was better.

As we left, we walked past a large government building, and it seemed likely that this was the source of most of their trade during the week. But we had very much enjoyed our lunch there, the formality of it and having plenty of space to ourselves.