Jour 2 Lyon: Basilisque Notre Dame de Fourvière

I'm so happy to be posting about Basilisque Notre Dame de Fourvière! It was such a fun sight in all aspects. It was fun getting there, it was fun looking at the outside, it was fun looking at the inside, and the views. Oh gosh, the views. The Lyon title photo that I keep using is from up there, you know.

Notre Dame de Fourvière is way up on a hill, basically the highest point in the city. You can get there on foot but we chose to use our 1-jour transport passes to hop on the funicular. FUNicular! See? So much fun on this day!

If you're questioning if you're in the right place, just read what's on the butt of the funicular. This one says Vieux-Lyon Fourvière, which means it goes between those two stops. Fourvière is where we wanna be!

The funicular's tracks are on an extremely steep incline. It was probably a 50 or 60 degree angle, from how it felt.

Once you get up there, you're rewarded with this little diddy. Too bad that they were doing a little maintenance but hey, they need to maintain these gorgeous structures, right?

This basilica is dedicated to the Virgin Mary. She's celebrated each year on December 8 (day of the Immaculate Conception) with a festival of lights (Fête des Lumières) to thank her for saving the city from a cholera epidemic back in 1643. The Virgin Mary is also thanked for the retreat of Prussian forces during the Franco-Prussian War. That lady is just the bee's knees.

There's an upper sanctuary and a lower sanctuary. We only visited the lower since the upper was closed that day.

This is another photo-heavy post so I'm going to insert a jump right here. Click on for more goodies!
The cathedral was started in 1872 and commissioned with private funds. The architecture has Roman and Byzantine inspiration, re: arches & columns and mosaics & sparkle.

There were a bunch of animal mosaics on the floor around the statue of the Virgin Mary. They mosaics were an awesome combination of gorgeous and adorable.

This little guy, Ira, was my favorite. He's waving hello! Wave back!

Another neat little feature about Fourvière is the mini Tour Eiffel nearby. It's called the Tour Fourvière and it's really not much when you get up close to it, but it looks cute from this angle. I read that way back when, people could get to the top and take in a view (it's the highest point in the entire city) but now it serves as a radio tower or television tower or something and you can't climb it anymore.

The main bonus of being so high up is the spectacular views. I love the orange roof tiles on all of the buildings. It just looks so French.

Here's a lovely close up of Place Bellecour (via my cousin's paparazzi-style zoom lens).

Another fun feature on top of the hill? It's a little 3D map!

There's the Basilica and the tower.

You can spot the opera on the left; it's the building with the arch roof.

And here's Cathédrale Saint-Jean-Baptiste.

This selfie made us laugh because I look crazed, since I'm not really making eye contact with the camera.

After a quick snack of flan cake (shown above) we headed down the hill towards the river. We decided that since we took the easy way up via the funicular, we'd just walk on down. I can't say it was a big mistake, but I can say we paid for it a bit. There were hundreds of stairs and our legs were feeling wobbly by the time we made it to the bottom.

Every time we thought we'd reached the bottom we were greeted with more stairs.

But eventually, we reached the river and the stair ordeal was over! Honestly, if I could do it again, I'd still take the stairs because we did catch some beautiful views. Plus, the more calories you burn during the day, the more you can eat for dinner with v. little guilt.

xoxo.