First Night In Lyon

Like most of our “travel” days so far, today was pretty much a write off once we trained from Nice to Lyon.  The train ride wasn’t too long (about 3½ hours) but we both couldn’t really sleep last night (which seems to be becoming a trend the night before we move to a different city).  When we added in the fact that it’s a weekday so Paul had to work in the late afternoon, we decided to just hang out at the hotel and nap.

We’re staying at another Ibis hotel, a budget chain in Europe which, when you book and prepay more than 30 days in advance, gets you super low rates right in the city center.  Our first experience with Ibis was in Nice, and so far we’re happy with the chain – the rooms are clean and consistent with exactly the same furniture and design.  The only difference is that our room in Lyon is much bigger than the one we had in Nice, which is nice!  We’re booked at the Ibis for a few more upcoming cities and we’ll definitely continue to use them as we continue to plan out Europe.

In the evening, we decided we would just try Brasserie George, the restaurant next door, because the lady at reception told us it was very good and we didn’t feel like making our way into town (the hotel is only 5 minutes from the center of old town but the train station blocks you from walking straight into town so you have to go up and around which is a pain).  We were kind of surprised when we walked in and saw that it was massive and almost full, but, after looking it up on Google, we learned that it’s actually quite a popular restaurant and has been around since 1836!  When we had finished our meal we could see why it’s so popular – the food is quite good, the presentation is very neat (a lot of dishes such as beef tartar are prepped by the waiter in front of you), the ambiance is totally casual fine dining, and prices aren’t too bad (about 17-20 euro per plate). Sadly I forgot to bring my camera down to take pictures

Although most people seemed to just order main dishes, we went with the menu option because we were both pretty hungry.  Paul got beef salad, local pork and pistachio sausage in white wine sauce and chocolate praline cake while I got cream of mushroom soup, something called hashis parmentier with duck and mashed potato and a dessert called a floating island with pink pralines.  Everything tasted very good except for the floating island, which is basically meringue floating in a bowl of syrup topped with ridiculously sweet candy.  It’s like ten times sweeter than cotton candy!  I saw a bunch of people get it and I don’t know how they managed to finish the bowl – I only managed to swallow a few bites before my stomach couldn’t handle the sugar!