Lyon, France, Europe

I think I got about 2 hours of sleep on the bus last night, and arrived in Lyon at about 7am. I had a nice leisurely walk to SLO Living Hostel, and am very impressed with it. This place just opened two weeks ago and it’s really nice. It’s owned by a few 30 year olds who love to travel and they decided to open a hostel as a project. I love that idea. I may end up doing that someday too. That way whenever I am not travelling, at least I can continue to meet other travellers.

I walked around the city of Lyon for a few hours and realised it’s a really nice city. There are some beautiful buildings in the city, including the cathedral up on the hill. I took the funicular up to the roman amphitheatre which was not all that impressive. I’m sure it would be if it wasn’t covered in new scaffolding and stages. There’s some sort of music show or festival going on there pretty soon so it hardly looks like a Roman amphitheater.

I walked up the street to check out the Basilica Notre Dame of Fourviere. It is a pretty impressive church from the outside, but it is really impressive from the inside. It reminded me a bit of the cathedral in St. Petersburg, just because of all the mosaics inside. It really must be an incredible amount of work that goes into these pieces of art. The panoramic view of the city from next to the cathedral is pretty impressive too. I decided to walk down the hill instead of take the funicular, since I had been told that it was a really nice park that you walk through. Maybe I went the wrong way, because it wasn’t very picturesque. It was alright, but not really worth a recommendation.

I walked back through town and got back to the hostel around 2pm. I was absolutely exhausted and just relaxed here for most of the day. I’ve met a lot of cool people during the day here, most of them travelling around Europe like I am. I stayed here with an American guy, an Irish guy, and a Moroccan guy to watch all three football matches. The last one being USA vs. Ghana, and USA pulled out the last minute victory. It was a great start to the tournament for America.