Tim & Jo

Left Italy and arrived into France, just like the arrival into Italy the exiting was just as distinct. All of a sudden the train stations were clean and new looking, the buildings were clean and there were sign posts! man they really are useful when you don't know where you are heading... The place we stayed at in Nice was really nice, very close to the train station so didn't have to walk far. We arrived, dropped our bags and then went for a walk down to the waterfront, the beach was nice, there's no sand only pebbles but still looked good. That was about all we had time for so after a good nights sleep we were again at the station early in the morning to catch the TGV to Lyon.

Arrived Lyon about 4pm, after finding a city map we realised that our hostel was on the other side of town. Just as if we were old hands we went straight to the metro, bought some tickets and navigated our way along the passages to get on the train, after changing lines and climbing aboard another train we arrived as close as we could to the hostel, only problem was it was up a steep hill, and it was hot... After a slow slog up to the hostel we sat around and sorted out what we were going to do the next day, went and got some dinner and then came back had a beer and went to bed

Next day we got up and walked to the Museum of the Resistance and Deportation, a museum about the French Resistance. It was fairly interesting but lacked any real exhibits, i mean they could have put the museum in book form, we just walked around the whole time reading panels, there wasn't actually any items or anything to look at... We had a meal across the street for lunch and then caught the metro up to the Lumiere Brothers Museum, these are the guys that invented the cinema, and the movie camera. This was a more interesting museum with lots of things to look at, read and buttons to press to make things light up and spin around After checking this out for about 2 hours we caught the metro back toward the hostel, caught the funincular railway up to the top of the hill and went and visited Lyons Notre Dame Basilica. Another really decorated church, this time with an underneath chapel that was also massive and lavishly decorated, pretty cool.

We walked down the hill back towards the hostel, got a little bit lost, bought some groceries on the way and finally climbed back up the hill to the hostel... All's well that ends well We ate dinner and then sat around until heading to bed, as we had an early start to catch the train toward Switzerland and Lausanne...