We’re going to be visiting a friend near Clermont-Ferrand in September. We have to take our friends to Lyon airport. We have only two weeks. What areas would you all recommend to no miss?
We love exploring small villages, architecture, renting bikes, mountains, scenery, hole in the wall restaurants with amazing food and wines, hiking, renting bikes and touring cities with a group.
Posted by
northern CA
2449 posts
Vienne is all that and more, if you do your homework beforehand and learn about the history. Their TI folks are very helpful - not this one for Isere more widely
https://www.isere-tourisme.com/fetes-et-manifestations/visite-guidee-vienne-antique
or this one which is a .com -
https://www.vienne-condrieu.com/que-faire-sortir/
but the official local municipality TI, which I'm not finding right away, sorry :-)
Posted by
Paris
6883 posts
Near Lyon, the medieval village of Pérouges is definitely worth a visit.
In a similar vein and closer to Clermont-Ferrand, the wine country immediately west of Roanne would make for a lovely day trip by car, with the villages of St-Jean-St-Maurice and St-Haon-le-Vieux as highlights.
West of Clermont, the "Volcans d'Auvergne" region has some stunning, wild landscapes, peppered with old villages. Without straying too far from Clermont, the Puy de Dôme cog railway is a fun excursion, and the area between Orcival and le Mont-Dore is also worth exploring.
Posted by
OP
59 posts
Averosimail and Balso, thank you so much for your advice. I have been researching your suggestions and we definitely will make plans to visit those areas and the best part is that is not far from our set areas. I can’t wait! 😊
Posted by
northern CA
2449 posts
One of my favorite photos is of a marker in the Vienne cathedral that commemorates the cancelation of the Knights Templar by the pope in 1312 -- just following that thread takes you into a maze/rabbithole that complicates what we think we know about Avignon and Rome and the messy history of the Church.