This is a very large and well known train station in Paris, completed in 1900, and named after the city of Lyon because of the frequent route most trains would take from here to the South of France, many travelers going to Lyon. I recognized it immediately because I had seen Monet's paintings of the station:
I felt so surprised and honored to be in a place I knew Claude himself had sat and painted. The authenticity of it all was magnified by the fact that the cielings were still dirty with the soot from the old steam engines, and the exterior of the buildings lining the train line were just as they had always been, detailed with intricate designs of pillars and flowers and faces. Having just arrived from the US where the roman architecture is not exactly prevalent, I could have spent all day studying all the little details that went into the decoration of these old buildings.
The architecture here, however, was just a little taste of what I was about to get in Montpellier, which was only 3 hours away... by a train that looked like a bullet:
(I also found it strange that the French military just strolled about the train station, strapped with AK-47s like it was no big deal.)
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