A sound night’s sleep and we’re up at 8:00 am. Not surprisingly the bed and breakfast includes a complimentary breakfast. We chat with the B&B owner while snacking on pastries and coffee. She has only owned the B&B for a year and tells us property in the walled city doesn't come up for sale often. Mostly it’s just passed from family member to family member. When it does come up for sale the hotel chains try and snatch it up. Interesting.
After breakfast we take another stroll around La Cite. It’s still early enough that the hoards of day tourist haven’t shown up yet so it’s still very pleasant. Dawn buys a bottle of local wine for her grandparents. We grab a taxi at the La Cite’s gate and head to the train station.
I've said it before and I’ll say it again. Travelling by high speed train is so much more humane than plane. Sure it’s not quite as fast, but the ride is smoother, quieter, the seats are larger, you aren't treated like cattle during security screenings, and the whole experience is just more pleasant.
Our ride to Lyon is about 3 hours. As we arrive it’s obvious that it has just finished raining. There are still a few drops falling from the sky and many of the pedestrians have umbrellas out. Thus far we've hit the weather lottery on this trip. Everyday has been perfect weather. Even now the rain has ceased to the point that neither Dawn nor myself feels that it’s actually worth deploying our umbrellas (that’s right, we came prepared). It’s a short walk to our hotel and we check in. I remember this hotel having a confusing website. Evidently I had booked us a studio room that has a sleeper sofa and ONLY a sleeper sofa. Once we work this out we upgrade to a room with an actual bed. Besides the halls, which are depressing and grim, this hotel is super modern and swank.
The nice lady at check-in explains to us that we can buy a day pass to the metro at the shop across the street and circles a bunch of interesting stuff in Lyon to check out. I always like to say that you don’t really know a city until you've been confused by it’s metro and made a bunch of unnecessary stops. Actually, I've never said that, but that’s what happened. After a couple of missteps we figure out how it works and where we want to be and from then on the Lyon metro is our friend. We visit it’s old town, it’s obligatory Gothic cathedrals (plural!) We walk through it’s shopping district and overall it seems like a pretty nice metropolitan town.
For dinner we eat at a place right next to our hotel that the concierge recommended. It turns out that the concierge knows her stuff and it’s a super nice recommendation. I get a duck tartare that is amazing. I've never had duck tartare before, but if I see it on a menu again I’m going to order it in hopes that it’s anything like what I ate tonight. Dawn ordered a pork dish and I ordered a white fish from Lake Geneva (since we traveling there tomorrow I thought I should get a preview). The fish is very very good, but pales in comparison to the magical pork dish Dawn receives. For dessert I get a chartreuse souffle that is outstanding.
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