Blogs from Rhône-Alpes, France, Europe - page 8

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

Bonjour à tous. Voilà c’est fini.....mon 5ème bilan pour l’Europe Nord 2018. Un voyage très différent des 4 premiers en Amérique du Nord. Je le savais en partant. Beaucoup plus urbain, et qui c’est traduit par beaucoup plus de marche à pied. Le compteur m’indique que depuis le 10 juin j’ai fait 322,8 km à pied. Honnêtement depuis Berlin je commençais à sentir la fatigue, les grosses chaleurs actuelles n’y sont pas étrangères. La voiture a fait elle 13580 km (garage-garage), consommation 5.5 litre de g.o, vitesse moyenne 68.4 km/h. La moyenne de la vitesse est remontée depuis la Pologne, de 10kmh, la consommation aussi elle est restée longtemps à 4.7. Un régal cette voiture. 10 pays traversés, plus une petite incursion en République Tchèque, autant de capitales arpentées. Elles ont toutes leur charme, si je ... 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

From Lyon we went by car in the direction of the Alps. To see a bit more of the country and to safe the toll of the highway, we decided to take the national route in the direction of Aix-les-Bains. That was a stupid idea for the first part of the trip. On a friday evening, traffic was intense. Everyone was out to reach their week-end destination.But the closer we came to the mountains, the nicer was the route. Through beautiful landscapes with flowerfields we reached Tunnel du Chat. Once coming out of this tunnel we had an amazing view over the Lac du Bourget and Aix-les-Bains in the distance. We have to admit that this part of France or the landscapes and smaller towns and villages are much more appealing to us than the big ... read more