24 Hours: Paris — Lyon — Geneva (Terri and Finn’s European Adventure Day 10)
We donned our masks and boarded a train to Lyon at the Gare de Lyon train station after our last full day in Paris (Day 9). Finn napped while I caught up on my journaling and put together a playlist for the next part of our road trip. I took advantage of the in-seat outlets and charged all of my devices.
We’d left Terry’s apartment spic and span along with some goodies that we’d picked up along the way.
It was a random variety of things including a tea towel and some garlic olive spread from the market in L’Isle sur la Sorgue, a mister for her plants that we’d picked up at the plant/taxidermy place in the Saint-Germain, some cute cocktail napkins from the same place, and a bottle of champagne. We hoped she would enjoy them when she got back from Les Arcs a few weeks later.
We made sure to bring her house key that we planned to return to her in Les Arcs so that her daughter Kriss could get back into the apartment when she returned in Paris.
We arrived in Lyon without issue and then wandered around the train station looking for the car rental signs. We finally found Hertz and we were helped by a really nice gentleman from Brazil named Joaquin. We learned that he’s 40 years old, has three kids., and one of his daughters is 20 and speaks foour languages. I love meeting and learning about people as we travel.
After navigating around the construction, we exited the parking lot, set the GPS for Geneva and went in search of a restaurant for lunch. You already know how this goes since it was getting close to 2 PM. We were taking side roads instead of the freeway and still couldn’t find a place to eat lunch.
We stopped in one that had just closed and ended up at a huge grocery store where we picked up some sushi (and chopsticks…these will become critical later), a baguette, pre-packaged containers of chocolate mousse, carrots, and hummus.
Finn fed me sushi , carrots, and hummus as we drove in search of soemthing interesting to see. At one point, I was driving and using the connected end of the chopsticks to eat my container of chocolate mousse. This became a ‘thing’ on our trip and we both now have wooden chopsticks in our backpacks, just in case.
We stopped at L’Abbaye d’Ambronay and looked for a bathroom making the obligatory stop in the gift shop.
We walked the grounds and appreciated the beauty of the abbey. I can’t tell you anything about this place.
What we really needed was a bathroom so we walked around the tiny town in search of an open cafe or restaurant. No luck.
We got back in the car and kept driving toward Geneva and discovered this beautiful lake in Nantua, Lac de Nantua.
We stopped to take a few pictures (after I parked illegally) on the side of the road.
It was a beautiful drive that took us about two hours before we got to the Swiss border. It still blows my mind that we are able to easily drive across the border from one country to another. There were buildings set up as if it was a checkpoint but we went right through to slowly drive through Geneva toward the hotel.
It took a while but eventually we made it to our hotel, the Novotel Geneve Centre, and I was so happy to be able to parallel park in a tiny spot in front of the hotel (behind a huge bus) so we could check in. My parallel parking was getting impressive. And we avoided driving around the block to find parking and find the hotel parking lot.
After checking in and chatting with an incredibly helpful gentleman, Matthieu, we reparked the car in the hotel parking. The parking spaces were so small and I had to back into the spot. Finn can tell you that I’ve not been great at parking (forward, backward, parallel) in a car but I was getting damned good at it. It really helped that the car was small. BTW, don’t ask Finn about this because they will have to tell you about one time I set a helicopter down on a windy day.
Our room was huge and the hotel was situated in a central spot. By the time we walked out to get some dinner, it was approaching 9 PM and we were both hungry.
We walked by a promising looking Lebanese restaurant (Les Saveurs du Libon) but continued on to do a loop to see what else was open, returning to Les Saveurs. The food was fantastic.
Finn ordered a vegetarian plate that included baba ghanoush, hummus, tabbouleh, tzatziki, falafels, and something else and it was so good that we went back the following night and had essentially the same thing and asked to have the same server.
I had the chef’s special: beef kebab, grilled veggies, baba ghanoush, and rice. All of this was accompaned by fresh-from-the-oven pita bread. From my seat, I watched them put the pita dough in the fire (fire), pull out the puffy bread when it was done, and carry it straight to a customer’s table. By the time it got to the table, it was no longer puffed up.
It was a beautiful evening but we were tired and we returned to the hotel in hopes of getting a good night’s sleep.
The next morning we ventured out into the cooler somewhat overcast weather and walked down the street to Qafe Guidoline that Matthieu had recommended for breakfast.
We both brought our journals to write in as we enjoyed a very bready breakfast of bread with eggs, bread with jam, and a croissant.
This place had such a cool vibe, including the music. Finn loved the plants that were all over the restaurant.
I’m a sucker for cool lights. It looked like the place turned into a pretty fun bar later in the day.
After breakfast, we continued down toward Lac Leman (Lake Geneva to us Americans) to continue with our Day 11 (Geneva) adventure. More on that later.
Terri Hanson Mead is the multi-award winning author of Piloting Your Life, Managing Partner of Solutions2Projects, LLC, and an advocate for women through all of her platforms including YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, and this blog. Terri is the mother of two college aged kids, is based in Redwood City, CA and in her spare time, loves to travel, cook, play tennis, and fly helicopters around the San Francisco Bay Area, especially under the Golden Gate Bridge.
