I’m excited about this post because I loved Lyon so much. It was our next destination after Paris and our last stop in France.
Here’s why we loved Lyon:
Firstly, Lyon wasn’t initially on our radar of cities to visit during our Europe trip. It’s not as popular of a tourist destination in comparison to Paris and I haven’t come across any Lyon posts or recommendations online until we decided to stay here.
It was my friend Antonia that brought it up to me as she said Lyon is deemed as the ‘gastronomic capital’ of France, if not Europe. Max and I love food so this piqued our interest. After looking at our potential itinerary, Lyon was perfect because it was in between Paris and Milan. Rather than taking the train straight from Paris to Milan, we decided to spend a few days in Lyon instead and that was a great decision.
Day 1:
Following from my Paris blog post, we took the train from Paris Gare de Lyon train station to Lyon Part-Dieu and arrived around 2:30pm. It’s a short 2 hour train ride. After figuring out the public transport, we took the bus to our Airbnb and we were met by our lovely host (I’ll have details of our accommodation at the end of this post). It was such a hot day so we were so glad to have aircon. We settled in and rested for a bit.
We went for a walk just before dinner to get a sense of our neighbourhood and that was quite nice. There were pastry shops and vintage stores, grocery store, eateries close by and also a gelato and bubble tea place at the bottom of our building. Everything seemed close and walkable.
For dinner, we ended up at Les Infideles. Our Airbnb had a little book of recommendations, not just from the host but from others who have stayed there. We chose this from the list. It was located in an alleyway full of eateries.
The food did not disappoint! For entrees, Max got the croquettes and I got the crab wontons. For mains, Max got the Norwegian salmon and I had the Pork tenderloins. I loved mine and I used the bread to clean my plate because the sauce was so good. For dessert I had the mango pineapple floating island and Max had a very interesting creamy white chocolate with CBD.
For our first meal in Lyon, we were impressed. We were off to a great start!
After dinner, we walked around Lyon town and we loved the vibe of Lyon. Paris was so busy, noisy and chaotic. Lyon was less busy, still have beautiful architecture and more compact.
It was nice getting the feel of Lyon on our first day and we felt more relaxed.
Day 2:
This was our first full day in Lyon and we had an exciting one. We didn’t have anything booked until midday so it was a nice slow start. I walked around, grabbed a pastry from a nearby cafe then we slowly got ready.
We then took the metro to Le Passe Temps, a French restaurant.
Since Lyon was a gastronomic capital, Max and I wanted to treat ourselves by booking at least one Michelin star restaurant during our trip. Lyon had a lot and we managed to get a booking at Le Passe Temps for lunch.
I can’t exactly remember which menu we chose but I think we chose the 6 course menu. It turned out to be more than 6 courses anyway with amuse bouche. Since there was no written menu, it’s hard to remember every single dish we received but our mains had fish and it was so delicious. The sauce was absolutely amazing. The dessert was amazing too. The beetroot dish (upper right) was so pretty, I didn’t want to ruin it but I had to taste it and was delicious too. All the flavours were great.
We ended our meal with madeleines. We were quite full after all of those. They might be small meals but they pace them nicely and there were a lot in total including the amazing bread basket and French butter. I had to stop myself from eating all the bread but French butter and bread is an elite combination.
For a Michelin starred restaurant, we loved Le Passe Temps as it didn’t feel too formal, upright or pretentious as some fine dining restaurants. The service and food were impeccable. We highly recommend and to be honest, the price wasn’t ridiculously expensive either. We went for lunch which is cheaper than dinner too (it was harder to get a dinner reservation at any Michelin star restaurants). Our lunch was €75 per person / $135NZ.
We were quite full from our lunch but we passed by a proper supermarket so we wanted to check it out before taking the metro back. Looking at food at different places is fascinating to us especially finding things we can’t get back home in NZ. I also stocked up on chocolate to bring back as presents. I nabbed the Fermiere chocolate mousse too and omg, it was so good that I wish I can find it here in NZ!
After our supermarket shop, we went back to our Airbnb, rested and figured out what to do for the rest of the afternoon.
We ended up going to Vieux Lyon which is the ‘old Lyon’. It has more medieval buildings, cobblestone streets and even ancient ruins.
The older part of Lyon is amazingly beautiful!
We then took the funiculaire to go up to Fourviere. A funiculaire/funicular is basically a cable car system. There are two in Lyon which takes you up the hill. I highly recommend taking it!
The funiculaire took us up to Fourviere which had an amazing view of the city.
Up the top is also the Basilica of Notre Dame of Fourvière. The inside of this basilica was beautiful.
A few minutes walk from the basilica is the roman theatre.
The Théâtre Gallo Romain de Lyon-Fourvière is the remains of the ancient Roman theatre. It’s amazing! It’s built on the hill and has a great view of Lyon. It’s a UNESCO world heritage site and it’s even better that they still use it for events and music festivals!
This Roman amphitheater that is around 2000 years old is still being used. It was so cool. There was a festival on that weekend and when we visited, they were doing soundcheck. It was amazing to see ancient ruins being utilised to this day and being enjoyed by people. We absolutely loved this place. Well worth a visit and it’s free to walk around in. There is a museum next to it too.
We took the funiculaire down and explored the streets a bit more. We found a cat which excited us as we missed our cats back home so much. This cat came out of this hole in the wall and someone left food for it. We then got gelato afterwards and slowly made our way home.
The older part of Lyon was absolutely amazing. We loved it so much. Lyon was just such a good vibe. There are still heaps of people but not like Paris and the history and architecture still blew us away.
It was a big day of walking for us so dinner this night was at a nearby Japanese restaurant for my Asian food/rice fix. We went to Kome Izakaya which was pretty good.
Day 3:
This was our last full day in Lyon. We ended up having a chill morning then took the metro to the Lyon Botanical Gardens. The gardens is within the massive Parc de la Tête d’Or.
The botanical gardens in huge and had a nice variety of plants. The greenhouse is the biggest greenhouse I’ve ever seen and been in. It has upper levels. It was impressive.
After the garden area, we decided to just walk around the park. What came as a surprise to us was that within this park, is a zoo!
There is a free zoo in this massive park that is free for everyone. They had a good variety of animals. They even had red pandas! The tortoises were cute and there were so many of them. We weren’t expecting it at all so it was such a nice surprise.
As we continued to walk around the park, we realised how awesome it was. There are so many activities. There’s a train, a lake, rose garden etc. If you have a free day in Lyon and the weather is beautiful, this is a great place to go and it’s free. It’s a massive park so we did lots of walking again.
After our park excursion, we were exhausted so we took the metro back home and had a nap.
After some rest, I was ready to explore again. I wanted to check out some shops and Max wanted to come with. We stopped by this cafe first as we saw the truffle croque monsieur from the window.
It was in Lyon shops that I made my first big purchase of the trip. I didn’t shop much in London (mostly Boots for essentials and Glossier) and in Paris (mostly from the pharmacy and Hermes beauty). This time around, I fell in love with a bag in Longchamp. I’ve always liked the Le Pliage style and was after the mini (pouch style). I ended up getting the size up and in full leather rather than the usual canvas.
I ended up getting the Longchamp Le Pliage Xtra XS bag in full leather with a thick strap. I didn’t have a bag in this colour so I thought it would be a nice addition to my collection. The sales associate said it’s a limited edition bag due to the strap and it was the last one in Lyon. I didn’t even hesitate and I usually think about my big purchases for a long time. When you’re on holiday, you don’t get the extra time so I just went and bought it. We don’t even have a Longchamp store in NZ so there was no way for me to get this here.
I have zero regrets on this bag purchase and it’s a French brand too so it’s my main souvenir from our France travels. We also went to a few more luxury designer stores like Hermes as I wanted to try on the Oran sandals until I realised it’s so thin and not worth the price. I also managed to nab a vintage Escada blazer in one of the vintage shops nearby.
Max wanted to check this cute bookshop out on our first day but it was closed so we ended up here afterwards for a little browse.
We also went to Place Bellecour which is a popular square but the main statue was under construction/maintenance hence our sad faces haha. We ended up going back home to rest before our dinner reservation.
For dinner, we ended up choosing another restaurant from the notebook in our Airbnb, Le Potager des Halles. Apparently this was a nice place and close by too. They were right. The food was fantastic.
We had gambas to start which were delicious then I had the duck breast while Max had pork. For dessert, we shared the meringue with mango, passionfruit and mascarpone. They were all so yum.
I’m not a big alcohol drinker as I don’t tend to like a lot of them but I do like cocktails if I choose to drink. This restaurant had pina colada in their cocktails list and it’s my favourite cocktail so I had to order it. It was so good, I had another one. It was a great way to celebrate our lovely time in Lyon and sadly our last night in this wonderful city.
After dinner, we walked and ended up by the river. It was such a nice day and the sun was setting. There were heaps of people having drinks and picnic along the river.
Day 4:
This was our last half day in Lyon. I grabbed a coffee from a cafe nearby before packing everything to leave. It was a bittersweet time because we loved Lyon so much. We took the bus back to the train station and boarded the train to head to Italy. Our next destination is Milan so that’s up next.
Lyon Airbnb:
I didn’t end up having too many photos of our Airbnb but it was good. Our host was lovely, it was a much bigger space than our Paris apartment, had aircon and a washing machine. The main reason why we booked Airbnbs was to have a washing machine as we didn’t want to spend time in laundromats. Our London and Paris accommodations didn’t have one so it was in Lyon that we were able to do all our laundry.
I highly recommend bringing/buying laundry sheets and Max also brought a portable washing line which was so handy.
I already said it from the beginning but our time in Lyon was amazing. We absolutely loved it and I would go back there in a heartbeat. Maybe it was partly because I didn’t have any expectations from Lyon compared to Paris which is so hyped up. Lyon blew us away. We felt more relaxed there because it was less busy, the metro was easy and clean and the people were nice and felt more welcoming. The food and the options available were pretty great too.
I had to include this because I realised our Lyon photos with food were so happy! If you can’t tell from the photos above, we really enjoyed ourselves there.
Overall, I highly recommend Lyon. I’m so glad we ended up staying here and we kinda wished we had a few more days. There was so much more to explore but we did as much as we could without overly exhausting ourselves. I think it was in Lyon that we had a good balance of exploring and resting.
Europe Trip blog post links:
In case you’re not sick of me talking about Lyon, I also made some Tiktok videos of our time there:
I forgot I also made a TT of Le Passe Temps so more details of the food here:
A Style Collector 
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