Excitedly we left for France’s second biggest city, Lyon, a trip cobbled together in the last moments as pre arranged plans gushed away without prior warning.  Cruising in a Citron C3 towards to the city felt so right and as we happened on to the streets of the inner city we were greeted with a magnificent sight of the cathedral, known as the Notre-Dame de Fourvière Basilica, which was purchased on top of the hill presiding over Lyon’s town centre in the valley.

As a driver, the first thing you note is that Lyon is a nightmare of one way streets and traffic lights. Every junction forcing you to either stop or pushing you to somewhere you didn’t particularly fancy going. This made it difficult at best to find the accommodation. Upon eventually getting to the Appart’City, as was the name of where we stayed, the tourist office had been kind enough to provide us the entry code to the building. My final word on the Appart’City is if you are on holiday don’t stay there. It felt like it sucked all the life out of me when I laid down on the sofa bed.

Back to Lyon… the town centre is pleasant enough, albeit quick to see. It helped that the weather was favourable, which made walking around a more pleasant experience. After spending a few hours in the old town, I felt like we had accomplished much of what there was to offer, so thereafter we headed up the the  Notre-Dame de Fourvière. This is the  must see of Lyon in my opinion and I had a massive fun parking on the steepest hill I think I have ever parked on.

The only other real place that people (on the internet) recommend to see is the park in Lyon. My advice is don’t bother! You’ll end up at the most depressing Zoo I have ever seen, this tarnished the rest of my experience of the park. But considering you can get out of Lyon in 30 minutes by car and are surrounded by towns, villages and countryside it seems pointless to take time out for a park.

So I guess in summary, I wouldn’t go to Lyon as a tourist again and would advise to all that do go, to only stay for a day, more time isn’t needed and if you do stay, stay in a decent hotel – you’ll going to need it.

The most interesting observation that I take from my trip to Lyon is on the Sunday of our arrival, we went in the search of food. This brought us eventually to a shopping centre, all the shops were understandably closed. This turned the shopping centre into a more terrifying place, walking through with shutters down over shops, all you could see were groups of kids hanging around, looking decidedly shifty. It felt like a scene from a movie… I’m please we escaped unchallenged albeit hungry.