Paris to Lyon at 300 km/h

It was time to leave Paris, but first I joined a video call back to family at home, from the street in Paris outside the apartment. A chance to say hello and show them where we were!

Then we packed up our luggage. Somehow we’d ended up with more suitcases than people, and having experienced the Metro and its many many steps (especially when needing to change lines, which we would), we caved and booked an Uber to Gare de Lyon.

At about the same time as we were being driven alongside the Seine, nearby the Louvre was being robbed.

It wasn’t us! I think the closest we got was about 750 metres away, about 20 minutes after it happened. I do recall hearing police sirens… but police sirens seem to be an everyday soundtrack of inner city Paris, so it may not have been related.

Still, given the result was the Louvre was subsequently closed for three days, we were lucky to have visited a few days earlier.

We got dropped in the bowels of Gare de Lyon (the station to catch the train to Lyon), and made our way to Hall 2.

Friends had recommended Le Train Bleu restaurant in the station, but alas there wasn’t really time.

Before too long we were navigating the fare gates and boarding our double-deck TGV to Lyon.

The train departed right on time, and after leaving Paris, we sped up, with the internal screens showing we were approaching 300 km/h.

The screens also promoted the fact that we were travelling via an environmentally friendly mode.

Naturally about this time, our phones started pinging with messages from people who knew we had been in Paris, and wanted to know if we’d been near the Louvre that morning. Ummm yes, but… and now we were leaving town very fast.

Every so often we’d run parallel to a section of motorway. It almost appeared the cars were going backwards… or at least stopped.

There was catering on the train. You can queue, or you can order online and pick it up from the counter to avoid the queue. After wrestling with the web site, and mooching along at the pick up time, I found there was zero queue, just one attendant, sitting taking it easy, who jumped to attention as he saw me approach the counter.

Back at home, V/Line train food was never anything to write home about, but I do miss it. Along with First Class, it’s been almost completely removed (only the Albury and Swan Hill trains still have catering), and I can’t help but feel they’re missing a trick, upselling passengers to help bring in more revenue.

Okay, so catering isn’t a must, but if done well it’s definitely something that makes long distance train travel more enjoyable and attractive.

Our train ran non-stop from Paris to Lyon, covering the roughly 450 km in about two hours. It made a stop at the main Lyon station, Part-Dieu, then kept going to Perrache, which was closer to our accommodation.

The station is being renovated and we got slightly lost trying to navigate our way out, but eventually figured it out (thank you Google Maps).

Just outside the station is a memorial to Holocaust victims, reflecting that many were transported by rail. Translated, it says: “In memory of the six million Jewish victims of the Holocaust, including one and a half million children. 6,100 came from our region.”

I regret not going back to have a proper look. This web page has a lot of detail about the memorial.

It was a 10 minute walk to the accommodation, which was close to the river, and down the street from a lovely old church.

Originally a monastery in the 9th century, replaced by a church in the 11th century, but this is the new church… from the 12th century.

As we were to discover, public transport in Lyon is pretty good, but not to everywhere, and we hadn’t yet researched how to pay etc. The day getting away from us, so we decided to get an Uber to the Gallo-Roman museum, across the river and up the hill.

Given there were four of us, I thought we could order a comfort grade vehicle. These are typically larger and a bit more expensive. After taking the money, the app decided there was no such vehicle available, and sent us a Corolla to squeeze into. Uhh… great.

Still, the museum was very interesting (and as a bonus, entry was free that day). It’s built around Roman ruins, including part of an amphitheatre overlooking the city.

The exhibits are displayed over multiple levels, and you kind of wend your way down (or up) through them gradually.

After that we headed back to the apartment (standard Uber, which was bigger than the “comfort” one).

Our driver didn’t speak English, but as the car zig-zagged its way down the side of the mountain, we had a moment of joint amusement (no words required) as we kept being passed by the same runner jogging down via a more direct path.

There were not many restaurants open on this Sunday night, ended up having take-away pizza again.

And I managed to bump my head on a beam in the attic bedroom.

But we had a new city to explore the next day!