Would Lyon make a good home base?

Lyon is a lovely, lovely city that we found to be great with kids. There are lots of great buildings and the night lighting is very beautiful. We stayed for three days enroute from Italy to Paris. If you are interested in that part of France, Lyon is pretty underrated as far as I am concerned. We were especially fond of the big city park. We were in town on Sunday and the place was a ghost town, we finally figured out that everyone was at the park. It had a zoo, kid rides, and lots of paths. Just a really lovely way to spend an afternoon.

The reputation is that overall their restaurants are on average better than anywhere else. Lyon is proud of its food reputation. We certainly enjoyed the experience and the food in all the restaurants we tried there

We took our first trip to Europe in 1999. We were traveling independently and convinced ourselves that it might be biting off too much to go to a big city like Paris first. We had read an article about Lyon in National Geographic written by Bill Bryson. So, we decided to start our trip there. It was a good decison for first timers. It's easy to get around the town, some really great sights & museums, wonderful food. We have now been to Paris and it's our favorite city and not as hard to handle as we thought, but we love Lyon as well and have made day trips there again to walk around and to eat. Can't say much about day trips as we didn't make any, but as the TGV goes through there, I bet that it would be a great base. Paris a day trip for sure, and you could hit some of Provence. And like the above poster said, don't forget to go to the great city park.

A good home base for what area?

Hi Sally, The week-end market along the river in Lyon is fantastic! You can pick up fresh vegetables, flowers, breads, and pates. That's just another reason to consider it as a home base.