Mojito Night? Well don't mind if we do!

The last part of the first part of our Eurotrip 2019 adventure takes place in Lyon.  Our train from Marseille was only about an hour and a half with a short transfer to take us to the station where our hotel we located.  Again, knowing we would only be there for a day at the most and not wanting to be too far from the station, I booked a hotel basically right next door.  Good thing because it was raining when we got there.  We got there early again so couldn't check-in, but left our stuff and with a little research found we could get a 24hr transit pass good for all transit in the city for 6 Euro.  And given it was pouring rain we decided to go that route and map in hand, just start exploring.  Great deal unless you lose your ticket along the way and need to buy another one... I put it in a safe place so that I WOULDN'T lose it... and yeah... I lost it.

We walk out of the Vieux Lyon station right into a square facing a big beautiful, you guessed it, CHURCH!  Looking around I can already tell Lyon has much more character than Marseille.  It's still raining so we explore the church and then start walking around to see what we can find.  It's lovely.  Two rivers cut through the old part of the city (the Saone and the Rhone) and the city grows up into a mountain side making it very picturesque.    There are tunnels called "traboules" which are unique to the city.  From their description they sounded like underground tunnels that were built to facilitate the silk trade, allowing workers to easily get to the river to sell and ship their silks.  They are clearly marked on the map of the city but I didn't manage to find any underground.  Some were simply passage ways through buildings and courtyards.  I'm sure some of them are really neat if you find the right ones, but I was not successful and we were limited on time so we didn't waste too much time searching.  By now however, the sky has started to clear and the rain is stopping - YAY!!!!

We found a metro stop in the middle of a garden which was incredibly odd and again, with everything being named as a "street" of some sort, we fell upon a set of stairs that took even my breath away, literally.  It made all the other stairs until now seem puny.  Onward and upward!  It will prep us for week 2 of mountaineering.  The views were pretty cool but there wasn't much else up there, just more uphill walking to get to the metro to take us back down. 

From here we took the funicular up to Lyon's big church on the hill, Cathedrale Notre-Dame des Fourgeres and walked around up there looking for the Roman Theatres which are the ruins of exactly that, 2 Roman theatres built way up on the hill overlooking the city that date back to almost 300 BC.  It was more hill walking, but it was so worth it!  Very very cool find. 

We proceeded to make our way to another part of town to Parc de la Tete d'Or.  It's getting later in the day and feeling hungry, we could not pass up a crepe shop.  Can't come to France and not have a crepe afterall.  From here the park is only a few blocks away and the man from the crepe shop confirmed that it is very much worth the visit.  It was a very large piece of land (171 hectares) that was donated to the by by a woman many years ago with the promise that they make the park and its contents free of charge to community.  Many things in Lyon are free of charge to visit which is very nice, and you can tell the locals take a lot of pride in their city.

This park is unreal.  It's stunning.  It has the country's largest botanical garden with plants inside the greenhouses and out (we missed the greenhouse by about a half hour - shouldn't have stopped for those crepes ;)).  We still got to see some neat plants outside.  The park also has a zoo.  Like a full out zoo - apparently they even have a giraffe?  There are monkeys and all kinds of stuff.  It's a small zoo, but still a zoo inside the park - again, free of charge.  There is a decent sized lake, lots of attractions for kids (go karts, mini put, carnaval rides) and rose gardens.  Trails all over the place, some paved, some gravel but everything is very well maintained.  I've seen some really nice parks in my travels, but this one gets a top grade.  What an awesome thing to have in an old city where green space is very hard to come by.  

We finish our evening in Vieux Lyon having come across a pub with 5 Euro Mojitos all night.  Stopping in for one, the drink was so good and the atmosphere so fun we stayed all night.  And many Mojitos later we still had to get back to the hotel and check-in.  St-Andrew's Pub - my kind of place! 

Lyon overall was awesome.  So much to see and do and we only scratched the surface.  It would definitely be worth another visit in the future as it truly is an interesting and history filled city with so much charm.

  Also, we came across an almond tree.  A man was out walking and picked some off the ground and explained what they were.  Never seen an almond tree before... and in case you too were wondering what an almond looks like out of a tree...