Blogs from Lyon, Rhône-Alpes, France, Europe - page 3

Friday 12th April We had an early start from the hotel to be at Gare Avignon TGV for our train to Lyon. Once again a very fast and smooth trip, but difficult for the 22 of us to board and alight. We delayed the train a few minutes in doing so, and before arrival at Lyon the train screen had a notice of an expected 5 minutes delay at Lyon - they knew we were getting off there. At the station we joined our coach which took us to visit Pérouges - l'un des plus beaux villages de France. It was delightful to walk around and explore, and to have lunch at a small restaurant in its delightful setting. It was sunny but quite cool. After lunch we drove some distance to visit the beaujolais winery ... read more

Day 6 This was an unplanned day as we had not signed up for any of the special tours. We discovered that hundreds of years ago Lyon was the center of the silk trade. Catherine found a silk scarf shop yesterday when we were on tour but knew that there is a silk weaving shop in Vieux Lyon that has been there for hundreds of years. These merchants came on board yesterday and gave a silk dying demonstration but we missed it because we were in Perouges. We decided that we would hoof it back to Vieux Lyon and see if we could find the shop among the many twisting and turning streets in the old town. We were able to retrace our steps we took on the tour yesterday to the center of town, then ... read more

Beautiful Lyon ... But I also got a chance to visit Valrhona's chocolate city (Cite du Chocolat), or museum in Tain-l'Hermitage! This the best organized chocolate museum I've been to (and I've been to Brussels, etc.) with lots of information, interactive tools (smell, look, learn, etc.), but also lots of chocolate to taste, yum! Highly recommend it, if you love chocolate, and the restaurant and the store are great as well.... read more

We decided to take advantage of the masses of local wine regions and after some discussions with Lyon wine shop owners, we settled on Chambery, and then over to the Côte-Rôtie in the afternoon. We also needed to get some more Lunch food, so researched a market in Chambery. After finishing at the market and getting to the desired local winery, we find that the French Lunchtime has stalled our plans again and so the executives (Rose and Clarke) decide to go to Côte-Rôtie and book in at Domaine Geroge Vernay for a tasting. This was exactly what we expected and tried three lovely whites and three awesome reds. It was now 3PM and all of the lunch restaurants have finished and so we found the boulangerie, picked up a couple of baguettes and headed for ... read more

Today we move to Lyon and preparation for the arrival of Clarke (our niece), the original plan was to not stop, but continue to Lyon, however half way through the trip, we need to change Motorways at Clermont-Ferrand so Rose got on the interweb and looked up what attractions were in town. Much to my delight her research revealed that the Michelin Museum (L'Aventure) was here, so we decided (she conceded) to go! What a great time we had looking at the historical cars and researching the Michelin Star program. There are some nice photos of the standout cars including an extend Citroen DS called "the crawler" and used for testing and developing truck tyres and the Micheline trains with inflated tyres instead of steel wheels. Once back on the road we came across the town ... read more