last call

No.8 rue Godefroy, 6eme., a photo by cocopuff1212 on Flickr.

We have visitors until Friday morning and we move to a hotel Sunday afternoon. The movers are coming on Monday. In the meantime, my son has two birthday parties to attend over the weekend.

I'm not sure how busy I will be during the next nine days, but I'm pretty sure I won't be spending much time on my laptop, so I decided to go ahead and post something quick in case this becomes my last update from Lyon, France. It probably will.


I took this photo this morning while walking toward Parc de la Tête d'Or. The building, No.8 rue Godefroy, 6eme arrond., has always stirred my imagination.

It's a rather grand building, standing all on its own on a tiny block with no neighbors. There is a big gate separating its courtyard from the street, and on the northern side, there is another small garden area, gated and fenced off from public.

All I can see of the inside is the ceilling lights on the second floor, and from the look of them, I know that the space is currently being used as a business office.


I fancy this building to be a mansion that once belonged to a very wealthy family but had to be sold off due to unfortunate circumstances. The harsh fluorescent lights I see through the windows are like cheap, ugly lipstick on an elegant lady -- they're incongruent, they don't belong with this beautiful building, and they make me sad.

I wonder who built, owned, and lived in this building. I wonder what happened to them. I wonder how many servants they had, what food they ate, what they wore. I wonder how many babies were born here, and how many deaths had to be mourned.

I am, of course, romanticizing. Now, if I was fluent in French, I could go to the Archives de municipales de Lyon and try to find out the history behind the building.

Alas, my French is too limited for that kind of project. It's too ambitious an endeavor anyway, because I have only nine days left in Lyon.