As we made our way from the Riviera we entered the flowing hills of the French countryside. Our first stop today was at Avignon, the one time home of the Pope. This was a nice town and since it was a beautiful day several of us decided to have lunch in a cafe under a canopy. We chose a place that had great specials, but our time was limited and we didn't have much time to sit and enjoy. The town square was full of restaurants like the one we ate in and there were street performers everywhere. It was an enjoyable place to spend a few hours.
Although we didn't have much time here we walked up to the papal palace and spent some time walking around it. It was hard to believe it, but at one point this palace was the center of the catholic religion - and it was in France!
We re-boarded the coach and motored on to Lyon - the self proclaimed "gastronomical" capital of France. We checked into our hotel and since we were right near the train station some of us decided to check out the possibility of taking the train to Paris the next morning as we were looking to get as much time in Paris as we could and the bus would not arrive there until later in the day. It turned out that if we had more than 25 people we could get a group ticket to Paris on a TGV Bullet Train that would have us in Paris by 10AM for around $40 each. We posed this to the group and when all was said and done, we had 27 people willing to pay the extra money to get to Paris earlier. We agreed to meet the group at the Eiffel Tower the following afternoon.
Once we had the train ticket bought several of us headed off to dinner. We found a great little Lyonnaise Restaurant and had a nice dinner before heading back to the hotel and a nitecap in the bar. We decided to make it an early evening as we were getting up early to make the train to Paris!
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© 1998-2000 Geoffrey S. Cable
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