Lyon’s outdoor market is open everyday from around 8 AM until 1 PM. It is held on a stretch of one of the main roads along the Soâne River, and offers fresh produce as well as seafood, deli meats, rotisserie chickens, and bread.

We stopped to admire an enormous pan of paella that was cooking beside a fishmonger’s stall. One of the men from the fish counter noticed us looking, came over and scooped up a ladleful of paella, and said, “Mais pourquoi pas? C’est une bonne idée, ça. C’est une très, très bonne idée!”  (“But why not? This is a good idea! This is a very, very good idea!”)

We asked for enough for two of us. After he packed some paella in a container and weighed it, the man added a few more mussels. He said, “vous pourriez les utiliser comme cuillière”.

We took our prize to a shady area behind all the  market stalls, sat down to a view of the Saône River, and ate the delicious saffron-tinted rice with chicken, shellfish, peas, and red pepper, using mussels shell halves as spoons, just as the man had suggested.