Every year some of the restaurants in Lyon sell off their old plates, pans, glasses and cutlery – la vaisselle – the crockery.

Cath and I went to have a look. The sale was in l’hotel de ville – our first visit there and it was very impressive.

There were lots of plates and a few pans and glasses for sale – even from the great Paul Bocuse restaurants.

And the surroundings weren’t bad either.

It’s time to welcome an old friend back into our lives – the Christmas tree at the top of our road.

He was a welcome sight last year and now he’s back.

Also the Christmas lights are back along Cours Franklin Roosevelt.

And then Matt is also back in Lyon so we indulged in a Christmas snap.

I saw this poster at the train station in Lille.

I didn’t know that héros was a singular noun (masculine) in French.

Mais maintenant je le sais. I guess the final s is silent.

We went to Le Brasserie des Brotteaux for dinner and Cath had this for dessert – un gateau St Honoré.

It is named after the patron saint of bakers and pastry chefs – the bishop of Amiens.

Apparently the dish was invented in 1847, by Auguste Julien at the Chiboust bakery on Rue Saint-Honore in Paris – next to the Tuilleries Gardens.

With its choux pastry and caramelised sugar it is definitely fit for a saint.

So it’s the 15 November which means it has been two years since Cath and I first flew to Lyon to see if we wanted to move to the city and work for Euronews.

The two years have had their ups and downs but we are still here.

We have trabouléd, eaten a lot of patisserie praliné, sailed on the Saône – we’ve even been to a bouchon!

With the upcoming changes to Euronews the future is less clear but two years feels like an achievement worth marking/celebrating

My cycle ride home was affected by the really high levels of the Rhône.

It’s rained a lot recently but this is the first time I’ve seen the river like this.

Look at these vitrines! Christmas is coming!

Of course there is the famous mur des canuts in La Croix-Rousse. But today we stumbled across another similar effort.

This trompe-l’oeil of a theatre is in the Charpennes area.

Apparently it evokes the misery of the workers who came from Italy in the 18th century, and that of living conditions in the 19th century, against the backdrop of the Grande Rue des Charpennes.

Like last year as it was 11 November we went to the war graves cemetery in Lyon.

Some floral tributes had been left at certain graves and the wall where the firing squad had shot members of the Resistance was a moving reminder of Lyon’s recent history.

Paul Cunq was a 20-year-old radio cadet in the Resistance.
He distributed leaflets, recruited other Resistance fighters and provided false papers to Luxembourg deserters from the German Army to help them escape across the Spanish border.
He watched German defenses along the Mediterranean coast, particularly at Palavas-les-Flots.
He managed to escape from the Germans several times but on 21 February, 1944, following a tip-off, he was arrested at Le Sphinx restaurant where he was supposed to send his bosses a plan about German mines.
He was imprisoned in Montpellier and then in Lyon, where he was tortured.
He was sentenced to death by a German military court and on June 1, 1944, Paul was executed by firing squad against the wall at La Doua.
His body was found in a mass grave at La Doua and identified by his father on 28 September, 1945.
He was awarded the Médaille de la Résistance.

There were flowers at the grave of Sergeant Charles Edward Taylor.

He was the son of William Henry and Emily Taylor and was married to Nellie Annie May Taylor, of Colchester, Essex.

He died on 17 August 1943 aged 29 when his bomber took off from Downham Market as part of an attack on the Fiat plant in Turin – the last raid on an Italian city.

His plane was shot down by a night-fighter on its outbound journey and crashed at Amberieu.

We were joined among the graves by a black redstart. A beautiful bird on a beautiful, moving day.

This black-headed gull was having a rest on a barge’s mast.