Parc de la Tête d'Or

Since we had spent roughly 11 hours walking around on Saturday, our agenda for Sunday was not too ambitious. Our top priority for the day was to locate the one movie theater in Lyon that was showing the new Star Trek movie in "VOST" (version originale sous-titrée -- i.e., in English with French subtitles, rather than dubbed into French) and catch an evening show. We decided to take the metro part of the way to the theater several hours early and then mosey our way through the Parc de la Tête d'Or, emerging on the park's north side right next to the Cité Internationale, where the movie theater is located.

The park's name means "Park of the Golden Head," which our Lyon guidebook says comes from the local legend that there is a golden head of Christ buried somewhere on the grounds of the park. Excavations in the 19th century to try to find the head yielded nothing, but the name stuck nonetheless. A sign near the entrance to the park describes it as the "green lung of Lyon"; it's apparently around the same size as Kensington Park in London, if you've been there (we haven't). It's a pretty nice park with a variety of amenities: a botanical garden, greenhouses, a small zoo, a decent-sized lake.... Below are a few of the highlights.

We were both quite taken with the Florida turtle "recuperation center," a small pond teeming with dozens of red-templed turtles. Apparently, in the 1980s and early 1990s, huge numbers of baby turtles were imported from the U.S. and sold as pets, sometimes by unscrupulous pet shop owners who reassured the buyers that they were "dwarf turtles" that would never grow larger than a few inches long. In reality, the turtles can grow to 6-10 inches long within two years, and more and more owners began to release their turtles into the wild when they no longer wanted to care for them. To prevent this non-native species from disrupting local habitats, sanctuaries such as this one were established in parks so that owners would have a place to bring their unwanted turtles. See this 1994 New York Times article for more on the problems caused by Florida turtles in Europe. (Apparently their importation was finally banned by the EU in 1997.)





Sign reads: "Attention, a turtle is not a toy!"



How can you not dig the turtle with his little American flag, passport, and suitcase?



Botanical garden (founded in 1796) within the Parc de la Tête d'Or



My fun linguistic discovery of the day is that cotton candy in French is called "Papa's beard" (or "Papa's whiskers," as the case may be)



After leaving the park, we had just a 5-minute walk to reach the movie theater we were headed for, right in the heart of the Cité Internationale. On the way there, we were able to check out the friendly neighborhood Interpol office....



...and the giant penguin



Overall, the Cité Internationale gave me the same sense that much of Lyon has thus far: that its best days are yet to come. Lyon feels very much like an up-and-coming city that is carefully planning and implementing its own slow but sure expansion and modernization; I imagine if we come back in 10 or 20 years, it will have changed considerably.