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Lyon and Burgundy in May

Posted by (PNW) on

I want to start off by saying thank you to all of you. I have been a long time Forum reader and only recently a poster. I have learned so much from you and you have helped me plan 10+ successful European trips over the last 10 years. I truly appreciate the time you take to help others have wonderful experiences!

There is not as much information on the Forum about Burgundy as other areas so I hope this well be helpful for some. I used the RS France book and the Forum for most of my researching. We spent the last week and a half of May on this trip. We are in our late 30s and enjoy history, museums, food, and lots of walking. I had been to Lyon previously but my spouse had not. Burgundy was new for both of us. We wanted to get a good feel for Burgundy so we drove around quite a bit compared to other trips. I was overwhelmed by how much there was to see and do in Burgundy. Rather than feeling like we covered the majority of Burgundy in a week, it left me feeling like we missed so much! We are both looking forward to returning.

We had 2 full days in Lyon and 6 full days in Burgundy plus arrival and departure days and our transit day in between.

Arrival day
We arrived in Lyon via train from Geneva. We took the metro from Part Dieu. We stayed at the recommended Hôtel des Artistes. We did not have the breakfast at the hotel but the hotel and rooms are as advertised. Staff is friendly and the location was great for getting around as well as being a nice area itself.

Day 1 - Wednesday
We had coffee and croissants at a nearby cafe and walked along the Saône river. We stopped at the Fresque des Lyonnais and then headed to Les Halles de Lyon Paul Bocuse. We planned on public transportation but the weather was so nice that we walked instead. The market was busy but not overwhelming around lunchtime. We had a seafood lunch at the market and then walked to Musée des Beaux-Arts. The museum was not at all crowded. It also has a lovely courtyard with a cafe if you need a break from the noise of the city. In the late afternoon, we went on an hour-long river cruise on the Saône with Les Bateaux Lyonnais. We did buy tickets that morning at their ticket office since we were staying nearby (can also buy online). We got there 20 minutes before our scheduled time. There were already about 30 people ahead of us and the boat was sold out. We ate at Armada that night Vieux Lyon. If the menu looks good to you, I don’t think you’ll be disappointed!

Day 2 - Thursday
We took the funicular up the Fourvière hill at 9am and visited the Basilica of Notre Dame of Fourvière. It is beautiful. The mosaics and colors of the marble floor wowed me just as much as my first visit here. Afterward, we wandered the Gallo-Roman archeology site and then visited its museum after. They have some translations in English but not all. I also appreciated the architecture of this building with the views out to the archeology site. We had a late lunch at the bouchon, Les Lyonnaise. After that, we went to the Centre d'histoire de la résistance et de la déportation. This was closed the first time I came to Lyon so I wanted to make sure I went this time. It was yet another place that was not busy. They have a lot of information, pictures, artifacts. You can use an English audioguide or they have a binder of information printed in English. We walked around the Rhône river afterward and through Hotel Dieu. We stopped for a drink and snack and skipped dinner as we were still pretty full from lunch.

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Burgundy: Transit Day, 6 Full Days, and Departure

Day 3 - Friday
Rental car from Lyon Part Dieu and drove to Cluny. I’m really glad we went to the Cluny Abbey. If you’re short on time, you can skip the museum but the site and the grounds were lovely. The town of Cluny is nice to walk though. We got there around 2 so most shops and restaurants were closed. We rented a gite in a village outside of Chalon-sur-Saône. It was great to have a kitchen to be able to go to the markets and buy things to cook rather than only look. We ended up eating most lunches out and cooked at the gite in the evenings. We packed picnic lunches for a couple of the days.

Day 4 - Saturday
Beaune: Market day. It was fun to wander the stalls. There was live music in the gazebo in Place Carnot. Hôtel-Dieu Hospice was also not crowded when we visited around 11am. The roof is even more beautiful in person. That afternoon, we did a half-day bike and wine tour in Côte de Beaune with Bourgogne Evasion. They were VERY busy and getting our bikes and finding the rest of our group was a little hectic but the tour itself was worth what we paid.

Day 5 - Sunday
We visited the Chagny market not far from where we were staying and purchased food for our next few dinners. It was about the size of the Beaune market in terms of number of stalls. After returning home and assembling lunch to bring, we drove to Bibracte. We visited the museum and then had a picnic at their designated picnic tables. We then hiked up the hill to visit the archeological remains scattered along the hill. After, we stopped in Autun to visit the Roman sites and the Cathedral.

Day 7 - Tuesday
We drove to the Fontenay Abbey, stopping for a quick walk around beautiful Semur-en-Auxois. The Abbey was not busy and in May, everything was green and in bloom. The Cluny Abbey was a good visit but if you can only visit one, visit Fontenay. We drove back towards Beaune, driving through vineyards. We had dinner at Bellevigne Bourgogne in Chambolle-Musigny. It is also a hotel - lovely grounds.

Days 6, 8, and 9: Monday, Wednesday and Thursday
These days were much more relaxed. We spent time visiting the wine villages between Chalon-sur-Saône and Beaune. We made reservations at two wineries during the week and also went to a wine cave another day. Especially in Meursault, we saw lots of signs out for wine tastings in their tasting rooms but not as many signs driving by the actual wineries . One winery did say that Sundays are a difficult day to wine taste as many producers spend Sundays out with their vines. We also visited Tournus on the Saône. It was a bit sleepy there with several empty storefronts but has an Abbey, a hospice and some lovely buildings. Our lunch in Tournus at Brasserie le Quai was some of the best food of the trip.

Departure Day 10 - Friday
We returned the rental car to Part Dieu in Lyon and took the train back to Geneva. We flew out the next morning.

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Miscellaneous:

Tolls and Credit Cards:
Tapping our U.S credit card for tolls on A6 and A31 worked every time between Lyon and Beaune.

Car chargers:
We rented an electric car from Lyon Part Dieux. We had researched prior and there were many fast chargers near where we were staying and also in the areas we planned to visit. Ideally, we would have rented a gite where we could charge but the options were very limited for that option for our dates at least. We did not have a problem with any of the chargers except for the speed on most of them were considerably slower than advertised. We tried to find chargers that did not require setting up an account or download their app and could just tap our credit card - that was pretty easy to find. We used the charging time to plan our next day’s travel, walk or wandered in a nearby store/grocery store.

eSIM card:
This was the first time we used this instead of our phone’s international data plan and it worked great for us. The rental car had built in navigation so we didn’t end up using as much data as we thought we would. We are trying to learn French so it was really helpful for us to look up words, translate, etc in the moment rather than trying to remember to look it up later, as well as being able to automatically translate placards in museums.

Advance Ticket Purchases:
We did not buy any tickets ahead of time for sites/attractions except the Lyon boat tour the morning of.

Places we did not get to purely due to time:
Dijon, Chablis and surrounding area, Auxerre, towns east of the Saône River. We also wanted to bike along the Saône or Burgundy canal.

Posted by
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Thanks for such a thoughtful report of your adventure! Enjoyed it! Hope you can make it back to Burgundy, someday :)

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