Lyon, France

We arrived in the second biggest city in France on a Saturday evening via train from Venice --> Milan --> Lyon. Our plan was to pick up rental bicycles, a tent, sleeping bags, a sim card, and maps for a departure into the Alps the next day to watch some of the Tour de France. This is when we found out that France is basically closed on Sundays … like omg, not even the mall is open! Luckily, our bike shop had an open house on Sunday so we were able to collect our touring bikes and test them out in the beautiful city of Lyon. So, we enjoyed our Sunday siesta by falling in love with Lyon’s bike paths along the rivers, numerous parks and friendly people.

We even stumbled on to a velodrome in Parc de la Tete D’or with some track racing, which got us even more excited about Le Tour.

We didn’t expect much from Lyon. So, what was to only be a pit stop to pick up bikes became much more of an adventure when we met Vlad and Clarie. We had fun conversations about music and France while they showed us around the old city. We stayed with them for a few nights and they were kind enough to let us borrow their sleeping bags and store some of our excess baggage with them while we were on our bike tour!

Monday morning came, and France opened its doors again. We filled our panniers with everything we needed for cycle camping in Le Alpes and boarded a train to Annecy, where we would begin our cycle tour which will look something like this: