Menton by the sea

Arriving in Menton was like being back home. It was warm, sunny and was near the beach! The moment we stepped off the train there was a feeling of relief "okay now THIS is a vacation!!"
The beginning of our trip, (save for a few really great moments), felt a little more like work than vacationing.
Between finding our next place to stay, not speaking the language and wandering around with a map in hand (cell phone data packages are hard to come by), it was a little tougher than we expected. We also got our first fine... we violated a rule about filling out our rail pass, and had to pay the conductor a 25 euro fine on the train... No warnings for us!  Straight to the fine.
Once we stepped off the train, we called hotel after hotel until we finally settled with Princess et Richmond hotel, located right on the water on the main strip of Menton, France.
It was so nice to finally be able to check into a hotel and sit on the beach! Yay.
We spent the rest of the days eating at waterfront restaurants on the boardwalk, walking around tiny cobblestone streets and even rented a scooter one day.  We saddled up early one morning and got to drive through 4 different towns including tiny Eze and Monte Carlo.  Eze was our favorite, like a little island-castle-maze.  Walking paths so small that potbellied tourists had to do-si-do to allow each other to pass without bumping Nikons.  Tiny shops with handmade trinkets and local candies, candles and dresses.  It was really interesting. Its a far cry from bustling Monte Carlo, with Prada, Cartier, Chanel and Louis Vuitton playing bookend to dozens of casinos.  There are more scooters in every Monte Carlo intersection than there were cobblestones in Eze.  Perhaps if our slot machine would have treated us kinder, we would have enjoyed Monte Carlo more, but for us Eze was the day's clear champion.

Menton itself was a beautiful little town, houses clinging to the cliffs, painted different shades of yellow.
It just made you feel warm and welcome.

Breakfast on the balcony!

Ezè

Villefranche-Sur-Mer

Beaulieu-Sur-Mer

Menton

Menton

Gloomy Lyon

We stayed in Lyon for 3 days, which felt like an eternity. Lyon's pace was a slower than Paris. Entirely different actually. Filled with boutiques, shops and stores, Lyon was more about the shopping than Paris was which was surprising. Our first day we walked around to see the historic sites, things like cathedrals and old Roman ruins, parks and other places. Lyon can boast the best cathedral we saw in France. Notre Dame in Paris has nothing on the Notre Dame of Lyon… the ceilings must have taken a decade to perfect. Our photos surely don’t do justice to the artisans who spent thankless hours toiling on their backs with paintbrushes.
After a day of sight seeing we were a little bored. It was cold, rainy and cloudy most of the days here, and by this point, we have not seen the sun for over a week. We decided to ditch Lyon on our last day and visit a town called Vienne (in the Rhone wine country). We rented mountain bikes, as all the cruisers in town were spoken for.  This ended up being a bad idea.  We took them on the local train to Vienne to start our "adventure" (a term oft overused by travel websites, not travelers themselves). Vienne was actually a cute town, we rode our bikes through it on the way to wine country. We spent the day going up hill on various different dirt trails in hopes of finding any sign of wine, but really ended up hurting ourselves on the bikes more than anything. 3 towns and zero tastes later, we realized we had missed everything! (so frustrating) We found a Tourist Office; but of course they were on break when we arrived. Long story short, we ended up finding ONE winery, which consisted of 2 brothers who barely spoke english, Drew tasted wine for 10 minutes and we left for the train station with a grossly overpriced $40 bottle of wine (and a few bruises from falling off our bikes). Yikes! What a day!! We felt completely defeated. Lyon and wine country were not what we thought. Definitely much more suited for older couples who aren't looking to do anything extreme but have money to spend on guided wine tours ($200 each). We then decided we would head to the South of France, where there is water and sun.  Clouds begone, we're done with you Mr. Cumulus Nimbus. Enjoy our pictures we gathered from Lyon, and wine country!