Great weather for a change!

lyon part dieu train station. interestingly, this Part II train station is larger and busier than Perrache....which I assume is Part I
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Hello all,

Today, I start my weekend adventure to Lyon and Chamonix. I had a hard time planning this trip because my success in Chamonix largely depends on weather. Also, the only train trips I found online went through Paris, well out of the way to Chamonix. I got some advice from students here and discovered that I should travel through Lyon. I looked up Lyon in the Let’s Go book and found that Lyon was the little Paris! And since I wasn’t going to look around in Paris, Lyon seemed like a great place to stop over on the way to the French Alps. I had heard, from many people, that Chamonix was a beautiful little city with magnificent Alps surrounding it. I looked it up on GoogleEarth and it did look like a great base for some amazing hiking. That’s how I decided to go to these places this weekend. So anyway, read on to see what all happened!

this is the Rhone river.
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I woke up late, of course, and barely had enough time to pack some last minute things like toiletries, snacks, etc. I had to literally run over to the train station and boarded about 2 minutes before the train left the station! I forgot to bring a lot of things like paper to journal on, fruits in my refrigerator, and take out the trash. Oh well, at least they weren’t extremely important.

The train ride to Lyon was five hours long and I stayed awake for most of it. It seemed like the weather along the way was all the same as in Nancy: cloudy, overcast, and generally miserable. Hmm, definitely not good news for my hiking in Chamonix. Too late now, I just have to press on.

view from my hostel!
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The train ride was nice and mostly uninteresting. Nothing special happened. However, I did notice many acres of sunflowers! Does France produce a lot of sunflower-seed oil or something? I tried to take pictures but most of them came out pretty bad from the moving train. Then about five minutes before reaching Lyon, the skies cleared and the sun shined through! It was great to see since I haven’t seen the sun for maybe over a week (really bad weather in Nancy recently)!

old people scootering on Razors at the greek theaters hahaa
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I arrived in Lyon Part Dieu and took about an hour to walk over to my hostel on Fourviere Hill. There was a terrace at the hostel overlooking the entire city and it was magnificent! I dropped off my stuff and visited some local Roman ruins; just a couple of old theaters that have been renovated and are now in use for outdoor concerts. It was on the top of Fourviere Hill and gave an even better view of Lyon city.

From there I went to the Notre Dame Basilica. The exterior looked very different compared to other cathedrals, I still haven’t decided if I liked it more or not. It had a huge crypt that I walked through. It also had an ornate interior up top, maybe too much for my tastes. There were gold-plated tiles everywhere and mosaics lined the walls.

basilica on Fourviere hill
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I walked through the old part of Lyon, lined with tons of restaurants, cafes, and bars. I eventually went to Place Bellecour because it was the largest square on the map. It was pretty unimpressive and actually very ugly (see the picture). From there I strolled on Rue Victor Hugo which had tons of shops with everything on sale. I was in no mood to shop so I continued on to find Lyon Perrache station, where I would later be leaving for Chamonix. I hung out at Place Carnot, just in front of the station, for a while and eventually headed back to the hostel. Dinner was a simple sandwich in the old city and the rest of the evening was spent talking to hostelers and enjoying the city-view terrace. I met a guy from Hawaii, I can’t remember his name but he was a haole guy from Punahou who was doing a master’s degree in biology at UH.

meringue pastry was waaaaay too sweet for me. I ended up giving it all to a homeless person at the church.
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Umm, nothing much more to talk about so adios!