Lyon

I took the metro back to the hostel, picked up some food, got my pack and then walked in the rain to the train station. I went from the Paris-Lyon station to city of Lyon on the high-speed TGV train. It’s a double-decker train and I had a seat on the top level. The train was fairly empty so it was quiet and roomy. Part of the railway went along a highway and it was cool to see how fast the train goes compared to cars traveling in the same direction on the highway. The train blows by all the cars.

When I got to Lyon I took a metro to the west side of town and then took a funicular up the steep hillside. I thought the hostel was up on the hill but it turns out that I didn’t really need to take the funicular. I ended up walking almost the whole way back down the hill to get to the hostel. I walked around that night and saw the St. Jean cathedral and a plaza somewhere where I got a huge plate of rice and beef at a Middle Eastern restaurant. There were a lot of Middle Eastern restaurants, and a lot of the famous bouchon (wine bars) serving renowned Lyonnaise dishes. Lyon rivals Paris in the quality of food and has more restaurants per square kilometer than anywhere else in the world. It was raining lightly all night and I was exhausted so I went to bed early.

The next day I walked to the train station to reserve another TGV train, this one to Geneva, where I would catch another train to Bern. The hostel is at the bottom of a hill on the west bank of the Rhone River, which is the area where the Romans settled. Today, the whole city is a UNESCO world heritage site, mostly because of the Roman ruins. There are two amphitheatres there. I also saw the Bellecour plaza where there is a huge statue of Louis XIV.