J&J's Excellent Adventures: TDF100 - Acclimation to French Time Zone, French Beverages

Newark to Dusseldorf to Lyon - an ancient city at the confluence of the Rhone and Soane rivers. We gave ourselves a day to acclimate, relax (!) and do some sightseeing. Yes, you may see a bike in this blog, but you have to look hard. Today we were tourists.

This is our base camp for the day - Hotel Couer des Loges. A 15th century monastery in the old renaissance city. As I write this blog, David Crosby is enjoying his breakfast at the next table (CSN is playing a concert here tonight in the Roman amphitheater).

Here are some views of our digs:

We went for a walk in the old city -

it was HOT and we warmed up our legs by climbing up the hill for a view. We explored the two Roman amphitheaters. Oh, another of the CSN guys just came down. Here is where they are playing:

Ricky Lee Jones was doing a Sound check so we had musical accompaniment on our tour. We are trying to get the video up here for you.

Farther up we visited an incredible 19th century church (yeah, I know - MODERN) that was amazing!

We were hot and tired when we got back down to the old city, so it was definitely CAFE TIME:

Back to the hotel for a rest and clean up for the evening festivities. We decided to have our pre-wine at the hotel bar. John, with the help of our wonderful bartender Robin, picked out a nice Cote du Rhone

We enjoyed a walk along the river and then scouted out some dinner. Sooo many restaurants to choose from! We chose a typical Bouchon Lyonnaisse in one of the many squares in the old city. There was a lovely couple from DC at the table next too us who were also in Lyon to go see the tour. They weren't riding, but were such great tour fans that they had rented a place on top of Alpe d'Huez for 3 days! Here is the dinner wine, also somewhat local:

We promised Robin that we would return so we stopped by to see him before bed. He made usa tremendous connection made of Absinth (The Green Fairy!) called a Green Beast. Oh yeah. We had never tried it before, so here goes: