Sunday, November 01, 2009

Lyon

My rule of thumb when travelling is to stay in the old part of town.  By definition it is the most historical, so typically has the highest density of things to see when you walk out of your hotel door.  The average cost of a room is slightly higher, but in almost all European cities cheap accommodation can still be found in the centre.  This remains true of Vieux Lyon, "old Lyon," where the cheap rooms are in bed and breakfasts and auberges, but despite that mid-October is well out of the July-August peak season, all ten or so of the B&Bs I rang were full.  Mai Li and I had similar difficulty finding vacancy when we were in Lyon in April 2007. Despite it being France's third largest city, there must simply be a dearth of accommodation in the old part of town, which would explain the high prices of the hotels, but after three-and-a-half hours of faffing around just to find a bloody place to stay I relented and threw €135 a night at the Collège Hotel.  Included in that was free wi-fi, water and Coke from the refrigerator in the hall.  I don't even drink Coke, but that night a drank my bloody money's worth.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

What a horrific story. I'll never forget visiting the Dachau concentration camp. A lot of visitors there, but the whole place was eerily quiet.