A 5 am alarm, up with the larks. No time for breakfast, well it  didn’t open until 6:30 and we were off at 6:15.  They did pack a breakfast for us.  A cab to St Pancras and we joined a big crowd of people trying to get through immigration.  They had just had the terrorist drive his truck through the crowd at Nice so the French were on high alert.  It was all very much like an international airport departure but once (as I guess you might expect) we get on the train (EuroStar) it is all very peaceful, cool and pleasant.  The hostesses were lovely and with only one stop on the five hour trip to Lyon it was a great way to travel and view the country side.  We reached speeds of 299 kph although mostly it was slower.  We were given breakfast and lunch and with our hotel lunch again we had eaten well.

  We arrived in Lyon at 1:00 And went looking for our hotel.  The cabbie thought it was funny when we were asking him to take us to a hotel which was almost the building above where we were standing.  Got settled in the hotel and we’re off to explore Lyon.  We checked out where we needed to catch our train to the airport the next morning and then brought a 24 hour ticket for the underground.  It cost 11E for the pair of us but the ticket machine would not take notes.  Off to find some change which of course shops don’t like giving, especially to some foreign sounding Kiwi’s with brand new 50E notes.  Perseverance brings reward and we get our tickets and head for the old town.  Our tickets allow us to catch the funicular up to the basilica.  Time for a bit of relaxation and a drink in the shade, a great view from up there and we get an idea about how big Lyon actually is. 

 A very large city.  A quick look around the basilica and we head down and up a second funicular which takes us up to a very quiet suburb in the hills.  We head down to the old city and wander through the very narrow streets of expensive little shops and places to eat.  We grabbed pizza to share.  

It’s always the easy option and we like pizza especially with a couple of glasses of red wine.  We notice they tend to chill the red wine over here.  We head over to the new city and surface in a huge square with Louis 14th sitting on a horse. 

 John & TA had mentioned the square but it was raining  and not much going on.  We wandered through the new town which was pretty quiet.  We were feeling jaded so jumped on the underground back to the station and sat  down for an ice cream before calling it a day.