Life in the south

Here's a bit of an update of what we've been up to since leaving Paris.
We were really looking forward to going to Lyon, as we remembered it as being a great city. Unfortunately, it didn't really live up to expectations. I guess we'd been spoilt by Paris.
We arrived there on a Friday and quickly went out in search of some lunch. There was a busy pedestrian mall near our hotel so it seemed like a good bet to find a bakery. We walked, walked some more, and some more, and couldn't find a bakery that wasn't part of a rubbishy chain. In just one street near us in Paris there were at least 3 in the space of a few hundred metres, and all of them sold good bread. In Lyon we ended up having to get a sandwich from La Brioche Dorée, aka the McDonalds of bakeries.
But hey, we thought, Lyon is reknowned for its food. Surely we'd get a good meal for dinner. Wrong! (See our food blog for details). We returned to the hotel feeling dejected but telling ourselves that the next day would be better.
And it almost was. We did spend a pleasant afternoon in the Fine Arts Museum and were starting to re-appreciate Lyon's charm. Then dinner struck in the form of a very average pizza meal in an Italian restaurant. We figured we were on safe ground with pizza, as it's hard to screw up but they managed. Surely the next day...
The last time we were in Lyon we ate at a nice little restaurant next to the stunning Fouvière cathedrale. The restaurant had a cheapish lunch menu, the food was great, and there's an awesome view across the city. Having had some less than average food experiences so far on our visit we figured we couldn't go wrong with this place again. This time around there was only one choice of mains - lamb leg. This sounded great but when presented to us turned out to closely resemble a NZ meat-and-three-veg roast dinner. It tasted fine but, and this may be picky, we expected something a bit more adventurous in the so-called gastronomic capital of the world.
Lyon is famed for its covered market and we planned to go there in the afternoon to pick up some food for dinner. We'd checked the opening hours and planned our visit around those. It was across the other side of town so we took a tram to get there, only to find out that it was closed. Unfortunately in France, supermarkets close on Sundays. Normally you can get around this problem by buying something from a dairy and buying a baguette but it seemed that, of the few bakeries Lyon has, all of them were closed for the summer holidays. Even most of the dairies were shut for summer as well.
Paris is said to close down completely in summer but you can still always find a place to buy a baguette. Not wanting to spend any more money on average restaurants we needed to find some cheap food for dinner. We finally, after walking several blocks, found a restaurant selling takeaway crepes outside. Great. Cheap, light tea. But again, not a success. No matter where you go in Paris, if you buy a ham and cheese crepe you'll be served a crispy, buckwheat crepe with a slice of ham and melted gruyere. The crepes we received were soggy, plain crepes filled with a mouth burning mixture of cheese sauce and cubes of ham. Mmmmm.
I'm sure there are good places to eat in Lyon, but take our advice - don't go in the middle of summer when they're all shut.