Lyon, France

Lyon is about a 6 hour drive from home, making it the longest stretch of driving we did at the very start of our trip. We left town in the aftermath of Fasching, and Matt drove us out of town. Carefully.

I say carefully because the streets were littered with everything you can think of - candy, streamers, confetti, and tons of shards of glass. I'm glad we got out with no issues (and arrived back to see everything neat and tidy once again!)

Anyway, back to Lyon. The city sits along the Rhône river. The river is one of the biggest and well-known in Europe, and it starts in Switzerland and travels through southeastern France before snaking along and making its way towards the Mediterranean. Lyon is the largest city on the river.

Our hotel was removed from the main area of the city but was right next to the river, making for great views from our room and the executive lounge at the Hilton where we stayed. (I'm going to do a hotel round-up in a later post, so stay tuned for some nifty pictures!)

Our first evening we were there, we had grand plans to find a SIM card for our phone. For those who aren't with "it," a SIM card is a little device you put into your phone to change the number and do all sorts of things, and we wanted a French one so we could get cheaper service in France (rather than pay for out-of-network stuff from Germany).

On our journey, we decided to walk around Parc de la Tête, or Park of the Golden Head, which was situated next to our hotel. 

Wow. This was a park!

According to Wikipedia, it is 290 acres large and some form of it has been around since the 1800s.

There were these gorgeous large trees....

And there's even a zoo in the middle!

We saw about a billion joggers and runners doing their thing and a super pretty lake where they have boats for rent during the summer. Definitely one of the prettiest parks we saw.

Anyway, we got totally lost and couldn't get out of the park for awhile, so we eventually had to abandon our SIM card plans for the day and headed back to the hotel where we found a restaurant close by. I was still in my transition-mode as far as speaking French, so it was a good warmup for me.

The next day, victory! I walked into a tabac (which is a country-licensed store that sells tobacco products, but is basically a small 7-11) and got one. And they were free! Neat.

We spent the morning learning all about French wine in our private tasting with Shannon who runs From Vine to Wine. I'll cover all the dizzying things we learned in another post, but suffice it to say, Matt and I are much snobbier and knowledgeable about French wines now.

The afternoon was spent in the old area of Lyon. This included a visit to the Basilique Notre Dame de Fourviere (which required a funicular ride, yay!), and checking out the Theatres Romains de Fourviere.

They still use the ruins area for shows!

 Here's me rocking my new teal and white polka dot pocket scarf...

Here's the Basilica. There was a huge crypt inside which was really cool, it was essentially the entire basement.

 It was super windy, so we didn't hang out for long. My hair was all over the place.

After a long day we headed back to the hotel for Thai food. I would have loved to spend more time here and try a few more restaurants, but we had to continue our journey.

Next week I'll post about driving to Avignon, Montpellier, and all the fun stuff we saw along the way!