June 30, 2024
By train to Lyon
We went and had a wander in the square and had breakfast. The Church we visited on the way home although very beautiful on the outside was very dark and scary inside. I didn’t like it at all. Then back to the hotel to pack up and wait for our taxi to the station. The Hotel Medieval has been good in many ways. The people running it are lovely and have been so good to us, we have a room on the ground floor so no stairs, the room is big, there are plenty of power points and the location outstanding. But the wifi and telephone connection hopeless (hence no posts for three days and some concerned family) and the air conditioning all but useless. We forgive them all this because they are so nice
The train was extremely crowed but we had bought a first class ticket so we were comfortable and cool, certainly money well spent. There were a lot of bikes with harassed looking people running up and down the platform trying to find the bike carriages. I really felt for them and could well imagine the chaos in those carriages. I did however see a couple of employees with bike logos on their jackets, perhaps they sort things out. For us it was a lovely around three hour trip as we went through places that we had biked through a few days earlier
Our train arrived at the mass of humanity that is Lyon Part-Dieu Station but once the mass exodus had subsided we easily found a taxi to take us to hotel. In our obsession with beating the heat the criteria of the hotel we had booked was based almost entirely on the quality of the air conditioning (actually it is much cooler here). The hotel is the Novotel at the Confluence. It is built into a massive mall and everything around it is new. McDonalds, KFC, Subway, Quick and every other imaginable form of fast food seem to be your options. Now Ken for one things hates malls so took an instant and strong dislike to it saying it is everything that France has been opposing for years. The rude receptionist checked us in to our very nice room and we went and had McDonalds for lunch
The bar and dining room of the hotel are on the second floor with a terrace that has a lovely view of the river and we had a very nice dinner there with a really beautiful bottle of beujolais This morning Ken found a very good boulangerie to buy breakfast food. We will catch the tram into old Lyon to poke around so things are back on the up and we are very comfortable
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2 months ago
I posted a couple of old tractors that Ken might like to take a look at. I was at a historical Ecomusée d’Alsace. It’s on my French Pootle journal, in the entry To Issenheim. Photos are about the middle of the entry.
Safe travels home!
2 months ago
2 months ago