All About Lyon!

Lyon was so, so wonderful (and, so delicious!). After almost a month and a half of 2-3 night stays we were very happy to call Lyon home for a full 10 days. Yes, it got boring, but that was part of the charm! Instead of waking up and packing, we woke up and relaxed. We went for walks in the amazing and highly entertaining Parc tete d’or and went to cooking class and ate baguettes and cheese and it was wonderful. This is not going to be a particularly exciting post, because it was not a particularly exciting week, instead it was restful and relaxing.

The park was right across the tram line from our hotel, in fact, we had an epic park view from our room. The park was quite large and we enjoyed walking in it during the very mild days (it did rain a bit, more on that later!), we watched the ducks swim on the large, central lake, we wandered through the botanic garden and then through the tiny zoo which housed monkeys, bears, lions, giraffes, crocodiles, zebras and more, we stopped to watch people ride their bikes in the velodrome and enjoyed wandering across bridges and through elaborately manicured parks. When we got tired of that, we wandered into the city and ate tons of amazing food. Lyon, after all, is the food capital of France and we took full advantage of that. We visited the Les Halles market where we sampled tons of Lyon’s finest treats and several restaurants all boasting amazing, traditional dishes.

We did have one thing planned in Lyon- going to cooking class! It turned out to be a disaster. The food was good and the class was educational, but it was just a disaster of a day. We missed our connecting bus and ended up walking a few miles in the rain with temps in the low 40s. We finally made it, about 30 minutes late and soaking wet. Luckily we were greeted with hot coffee and the class turned out to be a great experience.

To help us burn off all the amazing food we hiked up to the basilica that sat at the top of the hill, right next to a tiny eiffel tower (which turned out to be a TV tower). There was also a roman amphitheater dating back to the 1500’s. It was a very steep walk up, but the views were unparalleled. We had sweeping panoramas of the entire city. It was a gray and cloudy day but we could still see all the way to the park and our hotel which were several miles away.

Like I said, not very exciting, but very relaxing!