Brandon Donnelly — Daily insights for city builders. Published since 2013 by Toronto-based real estate developer Brandon Donnelly. — Page 307

One of the things that I have noticed while walking around Lyon is that there seems to be a lot of office space right at street level.

And most of it does not seem to have a consumer-facing element where people just walk in off the street.

There’s something nice about seeing beautiful spaces and people sitting at their desks (I walked past people sitting on exercise balls). It’s another way of animating the street.

Personally, I’d love to have an office right at ground level, similar to the above. But it’s not usually where our minds immediately go. We usually default to retail. Or at least I do.

So I’m going to work to remove this blind spot from my mental models. Office right on the street can clearly work really work.

This skinny 8-story building caught my eye in the Place des Terreaux in Lyon. I think a lot about these sort of small infill buildings because it is generally not how we build, today, in Toronto. But it’s a workhorse of a “fabric building”, and I can think of many streets that would be made better if only we encouraged this kind of built form. Truthfully, it’s probably most streets.

We landed in Lyon around 12:30 PM local time today. And it was about 15 degrees and sunny. This doesn't bode well for fresh snow in the mountains. But it does bode well for getting a nice raccoon tan.

Our flights and connections were heavily delayed, and so I had started mentally preparing for the possibility of an overnight layover in Montreal. Thankfully, we managed to make our connection. Unfortunately, some of our skis didn't. Hopefully they come tomorrow.

It's for this reason that I usually throw an AirTag in my bag(s) . It probably won't help you get your delayed luggage any faster, but at least it gives you some peace of mind knowing where it is.

For whatever reason, I also slept really well on last night's flight. I don't generally sleep well on planes. So I've been up all day, and we've been eating our way through Lyon.

The general rule of thumb with these overnight European flights seems to be that you want to stay up as best you can once you arrive. If you nap, it'll only prolong the adjustment period.

Our first meal was during that awkward time in between lunch and dinner when most restaurants are closed. But we went to Bistro Bondy (our hotel recommended it) and it was exactly what we needed. For dinner, we ended up at La Tête de Lard and it looked something like this:

There was a bit of cream and cheese involved in this meal and so, at this point, I am ready for bed. See you all tomorrow.