[Summer in Grenoble] Lyon - Day 1: Traveling Alone to Lyon! Relaxed River of Rhone

June 27th, 2015

Week after returning from the trip to Geneva, it was time for another weekend trip

Weekend trips were the sole purpose what my weekends existed for while I was abroad, so once again, I came to Grenoble train station. (because you gotta as much out of the study abroad as you can, and the best way to do it is traveling!)

This weekend was a longer one, so most of my friends were traveling to places that are further away, like Barcelona and Amsterdam. Personally, I really wanted to visit Amsterdam, Stuttgart, or Freiburg

Unfortunately, I ran into a huge problem and was financially at a bad situation, so I had no choice but to visit somewhere close.
and that was Lyon, France!

It was bit of a spontaneous trip, so I had to go alone.
The good thing was that I was able to travel at my own pace, and take as many pictures as I wanted.

About an hour of train ride later, I arrived at Lyon train station (Gare de Lyon Part-Dieu).
It was also the train station that I dropped by to catch a connecting train to Grenoble on the first day in France.

It's a bit different from the train station of Marseille, but it was pretty big.

I planned pretty much nothing in advance, because the trip was entirely spontaneous. Thus I had to first walk over to the tourist information center.

I saw this along the way.
Looked like a plastic bottle recycling bin.
I've heard that certain countries in Europe are very concerned about the environment, and this seemed to be an example of an evidence that supported the claim.

These are the pictures of the streets of Lyon.
I wanted to talk about that route I took, but due to time constraints, I'll just post the pictures.

Then, I reached an open area with merchant trucks.

Which was right next to the Rhone river.

The riverside of Rhone was built like a park.

Just like Han River park in Seoul, South Korea.
Rhone's riverside was just cleaner, smaller, and had a more modern design.
It's a nice riverside to have a picnic with friends at afternoon or at night.

but there was a place that I had to go to that I almost forgot about.
Yes, the Lyon Tourist Information Center!
Thus, I had to come back up

and start making my way to the Lyon Tourist Center by first crossing the bridge, as according to Google Maps.

My camera was restless even while I was walking over the bridge.

and that's how my spontaneous weekend trip to Lyon, France all started.
I got a pretty nice first impression of Lyon from the Rhone river and was anticipating what more the city had to offer.