Anyone here been to Lyon? Any recommendations?
I’m taking my mum to see Bob Dylan there for her 60th birthday. Also got a half day wine tour of Beaujolais booked, but otherwise nothing else planned. I like good food (not doing Michelin star restaurants this time though) and museums. Will be my first time in France. Any recommendations appreciated.
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Beaujolais is where they made the cheap shitty wine they couldn't grow in Burgundy (seriously) lol
I know there’s a lot of snobbery surrounding Beaujolais but I quite like it. It’s an easy drinking, light bodied red and is good on a summer’s day.
I went to Beaujolais it was incredible - but i just got a train up there and a friend picked me up and we stayed at rental property
I dont care about wine but i like being around vineyards
>he doesn't know about Beaujolais Cru
OP if you want amazing wine try anything from Yvon Metras or Jean Foillard. Or just pick a Morgon or Fleurie above 20 euros and enjoy the ride.
I was breifly in Lyon
was cool i liked it. my favorite part was hanging around the gallo roman theatre, the time i was there it wasn't really crowded at all
Didn't explore that much food - only place i remember eating was empanadas club (top of cheap eats trip advisor), it was alright, empanadas seem like they are oversaturating the market more than their appeal imo. nice novelty having the argentinan drinks
of french food, just got food from random cafes/cafeterias/sandwich shops and they were all good to me.
because of the reputation, there are a few pedestrian streets that are packed with restaurants - im sure many are not bad
if someone were vagrant holidaying lyon - Westfield La Part-Dieu is a fancy new style shopping mall, many comfy places to sit and recharge your electronics
I live in Lyon so I can't speak from the perspective of a tourist when it comes to how long your should stay or the cost of public transport. Make sure you stay at a hotel near the A or D metro lines downtown if you want to have easily accessible transportation. The must see places are downtown (the Presqu'île) with all the shops and restaurants and the Vieux Lyon across the Soane, and here I'm including the Fourvière hill with its basilica. If you're interested in the food there are a lot of nice restaurants in here but most are only open from 12:00 to 14:00 and then starting from 19:00 so be careful, and don't hesitate to make reservations. If you're going to a restaurant of formers students who graduated from the institut Bocuse it's very likely to be pretty good, regardless of specialties. Be careful when it comes to some famous brasseries (they tend to be open early until very late with no interruption), they're not cheap and not necessarily all that amazing. The brasserie George is OK but I hope you don't mind noisy places. I can't tell you anything about Beaujolais because I don't drink alcohol, I hate it.
>Westfield La Part-Dieu is a fancy new style shopping mall, many comfy places to sit and recharge your electronics
Yeah but DO NOT go there on Saturdays evenings, it's hell on earth in here. Too many people pushing each other everywhere.
Thanks for the advice Lyon anon. I’ll be staying in a hotel in the Vieux Lyon district - is that a nice area?
Yeah it's nice but very touristic so I avoid the area during weekends. I'm not too familiar with the restaurants there but I heard that there are very good ones and tourist traps. Not really traps as in "bad restaurants for naive tourists" but more like super typical restaurants that aren't anything special I guess? Anyway you can access Fourvière from that place easily, you can take the funiculaire in Saint-Jean station. If you're a train autist the metro C line is a bit special apparently, I don't understand anything about it but the rails are kind of unique because of the Croix-Rousse hill from what I've been told. Never climb that shit by foot. But Fourvière never replaced the funiculaires with a metro line for some reason.
I climbed that hill twice lol. It's not that bad at all. People are unfit or fatasses.
>food
Get Praluline. There's a place in Vieux Lyon (Pralus) that's famous for it. Essentially it's a brioche with praline. There's nuts in there as well which is normally a turn-off for me but you don't even notice them.
>museums
Didn't really go to many myself (Musée des Confluences and Musée des Automates come to mind though) but you should go to Fourvière (Vieux Lyon). Basilica with a really nice interior and a second church under it. The Roman theatre is nearby too. Take the cable car/funicular up for the journey and walk down (depending on if you want to). Apart from that Vieux Lyon and the northern half of Presqu'île are nice to walk around (the rest is shitty).
>general
God I wish I was able to go to Empanadas Club. Just didn't work out.
I was at Westfield on a Friday night and made the mistake of going to Burger King. Rubbish everywhere and crowded with annoying kids. Almost would've rather starved.
I've been twice, the food scene being the biggest draw for me. Tete de Lard in the 1st Arr and Bar des Oliviers in the 7th, are the two main ones that come to mind. Tete de Lard follows through on the typical Lyonnaise bouchon experience, where Bar des Oliviers is more casual, just a local bar that happens to do traditional French food very well. More reasonably priced also.
I'd also recommend going on the walking tour of the city. It's a good chance to meet other travellers if you're feeling social
How's the cooming in Lyon?
Go under the bridge by the university at night and I'd reckon you could get a homeless heroin addict to suck your dick for 10 euro.
Oh and I forgot, the metro line B sucks ass these days. It's been like this for a long time now that the line is automated, so from time to time it just stops working. It's the one that directly brings you to the Part-Dieu mall and train station though, so I guess if you get a hotel close to that location you should easily be able to find buses instead if anything goes wrong. A few months ago the entire subway system sucked ass because of a bunch of bullshit that happened all at the same time, multiple suicide attempts that blocked many lines during rush hour, technical or electrical issues, I saw a crackhead once trying to stab some guy in the subway when we arrived at Guillotière station (be careful if you ever go there, a shit ton of pickpockets lurk as soon as you emerge from the station) but thankfully the guy had pepper spray (which is illegal here so that's a borderline miracle nobody got hurt).
And Monoprix is one of the more expensive supermarket. The one in Cordeliers is pretty nice because one of the floors works like a conbini though. I also forgot to mention that the parc de la tête d'or is great to visit if the weather's good, and it's entirely free, whether you want to check the zoo or the gardens or the rest of the park.
>im taking my mom on an international vacation for a shitty concert and crappy wine in Lyon
Hopefully shes not as moronic as you because thats a waste of a trip. If you can still cancel take her to annecy, chamonix and colmar. Annecy wine will be better than beaujolais as they're the primary region for growing Syrah and Grenache, chamonix has ski lifts that can take her directly to montblanc with practically zero hiking and colmar is simply stunning.
The best of france is far apart by its borders regions, its major cities are complete garbage in comparison. If you really cant change your trip then cut your time in Lyon as short as you can and head to annecy and chamonix, theyre not too far from Lyon and will be far better. Colmar will be inaccessible but the addition of those two to the trip will drastically improve the overall experience.
Cancel the beaujolais and rebook with a winery in Annecy. Theres a reason the french made beaujolais sauce, and its because they know its trash wine useful only for cooking.
+1 for this plan. Annecy is really high on my bucket list.
What would you think of flying into Frankfurt and doing Heidelberg, Strasbourg, Colmar and Lucerne?
That sounds like a great itinerary. Strasbourg is wonderful. Heidelberg is nice enough too, the castle is fantastic, and the scenery of the area is wonderful. It's the area of the romantics. Other than that, it falls a little short in terms of things like food, and all the other draws though. Lucerne is great, haven't been to Colmar, but it looks peachy.
I thought Lyon was bit boring. The third biggest city in France, but I thought it didn't really have any distinguishing features about it. The architecture is nice, but it feels like you're almost in Italy, except the weather isn't anywhere near as nice even if Turin is barely a few hours away. I never really tried the food as I was quite poor when visiting.
Gallo-Roman museum is free on the first Sunday of the month BTW, maybe this is relevant to your visit.
I've been there, max 2 days and not more, it gets boring real fast and real french cuisine with all their foie gras and snail shit was horrible for me.
Did you really ever go to France if you think that is all there is to French cuisine? None of those things are even regional to Lyon. Lyon is quite boring, yes. I can't say I disliked it, but it is probably my least favorite French city.
I also visited brasserie georges and disliked french cuisine. But the city became boring after a few days.
>real french cuisine with all their foie gras and snail shit was horrible for me.
why not eat french varieties of things you like?