Lyon

General Information
Lyon is the capital of the region Rhône-Alpes, the préfecture of the Rhône département, with a total population of about 1,8 million (city + suburbs). It's the second biggest city in France (when including the suburbs) after Paris. Lyon is a major centre of business and has a big student population. Situated between Paris and Marseille, the city is perfectly located 2 hours from the French Alps ski resorts and 3 hours from the Mediterranean sea. Lyon is also well known as the French capital of gastronomy and has a significant role in the history of cinema.

History of Lyon
More informations about the History of Lyon on the Lyon !

What to visit? 
More informations about the places to visit in Lyon on the Lyon !

Lyon Couchsurfing Groups
Lyon Lyon Emergency Request Petites Annonces Sports et activités de plein air Lyon Language Practising

Getting a couch in Lyon
In Lyon, there are more than 12 000 surfers statistiques, including 3 city ambassadors Rafaèle BONDAZ, Van TRUONG and Matchêu DECAGNY. By searching people who say "yes or definitely" have a couch and have been logged-in during the last 2 weeks, you can find around 500 potential active hosts (information accurate as of September 2010).

Please make personnal requests before using the Lyon Emergency Requests group. This group is for emergency in time only.

A good way to be sure to find a host during busy periods (summer and winter) is to search for people outside of the city. Public transportation is good and there are plenty of people living within a 10-15 minute bus ride to the city center.

For your information, the Lyon couchsurfers receive a lot of requests each year for the festival of light

Meetings and Gathering


One of the best things to do when you're couchsurfing in Lyon, is to meet the very active Lyon's CS community. For this, we usually have several "traditional" meetings planned:

The Monday Meeting at The Antidote Pub
Every monday, the Lyon couchsurfing people meet at The Antidote Pub, 108 Rue Saint Georges ( Metro stop Vieux Lyon ). The Antidote has became one of our local headquarters. Bartenders are great and beers is good We start our meetings every monday around 8:30 pm with some of our new couchsurfers to have happy hour. Couchsurfing Lyon Official weekly Meetings

The Newbies Apero
Every month we organise an apero for new members at someone place. Everybody bring something to eat or drink. This is a perfect occasion to be introduced in the community and meet volonteers and other members. Volonteers can help to use the website and give informations. Also a good meaning to share experiences. Just look at the Lyon Group to know when the next Newbie Apero will happen.

The Festival of Lights
This is the biggest event in Lyon and one of the biggest in Europe. Each year in December The Lyon community host more than 300 surfers from everywhere. During four days the city is illuminated in an artistic way. The most popular party of the city. Do not miss ! Festibal of Light 2010

The boardgames night
In the pentes de la Croix-Rousse, there are some bar games. All kinds of boardgames, but mostly alternative ones. Some boardgames addicted couchsurfers meet there almost every weeks. Openings: Tuesday to Friday from 7:00 pm to 1:00 am, Saturday from 3.00 pm to 1:00 am. Sunday from 3:00 pm to 7:00 pm. 8, Rue René Leynaud, 69001 Lyon Openings: wednesday to Saturday from 7.00 pm to 1.00 am. Full moon night from 7.00 pm until the morning. Sunday from 3 .00pm to 1.00 am. 19 rue Sergent Blandan 69001 Lyon.
 * "Moi j'men fous, je triche!": The fee is only 6€ for the whole year. You can play any number of games, and invite (only once) one person of your choice. There you can also have some soft drinks and beers.
 * Les épinards: More than 1700 games, 350 games books and a bar

Partying
Usually we like partying a lot during friday and saturday nights. Here is a short list of some of our favourite places :
 * The Cavern club is a pub situated in a cave, in Saint Jean (Vieux Lyon). It's very large for a pub, and features quite often live music. One of our favorite ones. There is also mainy pubs in Saint Jean ( Smoking dog, The saint James, ... )
 * A great pub on the week end is the Wallace, located in Saint Jean. It is a huge pub on two floors, great for soccer match, Live music, 100 hundred different whiskies, ...
 * The Eden Rock Cafe : Another pub which features live music, but this one every week !
 * The boats : On the Rhône banks, we are used to hang out in some bar-converted river boats which also feature live music sometimes : The Sirius and The Marquise are two of the most notable ones.
 * L'Atmosphere : The best bar in lyon to party, meet people and have lots of fun, Montée des carmélites.

But, to be sure to meet us, either go to the Red house ( Boulevard de la croix rousse ) meeting on monday night, or check the Lyon group posts to see what events have been planned for each day !

You can also check our Google Agenda !

Getting informations
Check this following websites to find something to do in Lyon area :

PETIT BULLETIN LYON CULTURE CITYVOX INFOS CONCERT LYON ON VA SORTIR LYON 69 MY LITTLE LYON LYON CAMPUS LYON SORTIR LYON POCHE PETIT PAUME

Things to do
Lyon holds the 2nd place among French cities for its nightlife! Vieux Lyon, the quays along the Saône, Presqu’île, Croix Rousse and many other districts are overflowing with sometimes surprising but always fascinating, magical places.

Any ideas ? You could start your apéro (french traditionnal drink about 18H PM) at Le Dahut des Pentes, and then get to Café Lecture, listenning to erotic poetry or surrealistic philosophy (?), then continue to La Belle Equipe (and taste their wonderful gratin dauphinois)... but it's still early, so you decide to visit the famous Atmosphère's free dance floor and make new friends bringing you to Le Bec de Jazz, meet the boss, Tchango Dei, great pianist... it's about 5 AM and you're hungry, hopefully, your trip goes on to La Catole and it's inimitable "tablier sapeur"... Oh ! Sun is rising ! don't worry, other nightclubbing places are waiting for you...

Food
Lyon’s inhabitants’ love of good food and wine combined with the region’s delicious and varied cuisine based on local products have helped shape its special culinary culture, both gourmand and exacting. In Lyon, it is easy to find a place serving good food and very rare to find bad cooking. There are two famous places in Lyon to have a good dinner or to eat specialties : just take a walk in Vieux Lyon or on Rue Mercière (1°) and you will start to feel hungry ! These are best known places, but there are so many others you can't discover all in a year !

Be careful, the true typical "Bouchons Lyonnais" is quite hard to find and some imitations will disappoint exigent gourmets. Don't worry if you go to Café des Fédérations (1°), Chez Abel (2°), Le Pailleron (3°), Comptoir du Vin (4°), L'amphytrion (5°)... Few examples, and each lyonnais has got his own favourite cooks. A local association labels some "authentic bouchons"; the list can be found in this Wikipedia article.

Lyon is a cosmopolitan city and you can find a huge diversity of restaurants: traditional food (like "Bouchons Lyonnais"; 1st and 5th arrondissements), Chinese (7th), Kebab (everywhere, but several around Les Terreaux), Exotic food, Mexican food, Russian food, Indian food, Italian food, etc. Since many students are living there, you can find an abundance of cheap restaurants, but also sophisticated (and expensive) ones. You can also enjoy dinner watching a show or singing karaoke in places like Le Papagayo or Viva Bodega!

The website lyonresto.com lists most restaurants in Lyon and features many customer reviews; unfortunately it only exists in French.

===Vegan, Vegetarian & Organic Food=== Lyon has 4 fully vegetarian restaurants that are also vegan-friendly and organic. For a gourmet experience, try out Toutes les Couleurs or Couleurs Des Mets. If you're on a budget, head over to Soline which features a more cafeteria-style menu. For soups and smoothies, try PlanBio. For veg-friendly snacks with your afternoon tea or coffee, try out Boutique Confidences. They also sell organic and fair-trade packaged coffees, teas and cosmetics. For a late-night veg snack, hit up any of the many kebab places mentioned above. Some of them feature falafel, such as Adonys (rue Puits Gaillot), but if not, most of them will offer some sort of vegetarian option.

L'eau Vive and La Vie Claire are popular natural food store chains in France with many locations in Lyon. There are also several farmers' markets, some of which are organic. You can find a listing of the days and locations on the Lyon Tourism website.

Tip: The word for "organic" in French is "bio".

Nightlife in Lyon
Since Lyon hosts very different kinds of people, you will find a variety of places to have fun! From the numerous Irish pubs to the Australian ones, you will meet people always ready to party, especially the CS team! To make the night last longer, there are a lot of clubs offering a diversity of atmospheres: electronic music, exotic, gay, gigs, for young or less young, etc.

For people fond of music, Lyon boasts several venues for concerts (e.g., Transbordeur, Bourse du travail, Halle Tony Garnier, Marche Gare, Ninkasi Kao, CCO Villeurbanne). There are also several pubs regularly featuring live music (e.g., KraspeK MyziK, Trokson, Bistroy, Eden Rock Café, K-barré) and many boats on the Rhône (e.g., Sirius, Marquise, Passagère). You can even find places to discuss more or less serious subjects or enjoy the theatre (e.g., Espace Tonkin, La Mi-Graine, le Fou Fieffé).

Lyon also offers many cinema complexes, both commercial and independent art houses. For different kinds of shows or to watch a play, there are several theatres in Lyon (e.g., Theatre de la Renaissance, de Vénissieux, Les Ateliers, Les Clochards Célèstes, Espace 44)and also the Opera of Lyon, the "Guignol de Lyon" (i.e., the famous puppets of Lyon) or many smaller places such as "Le Boui-Boui" or "Le Complexe du rire". For classical music, there are auditoriums and the "Piano à Lyon".

Cyberspaces
This space is a travel library but also an internet Café The first internet space dedicated to the free linux system. More than 32 artisanal sirups and 15 fruit juices. More than a laundry service, Le Lavoir des Pentes is also a cyberspace and a non alcoholic bar.
 * Raconte-moi la terre : 38, rue Thomassin - 69002 Lyon, Tel. : 04 78 92 60 23
 * OpenSource Café: 126, rue sébastien Gryphe - 69007 Lyon, Tel. : 04-72-73-45-76
 * Le Lavoir des pentes: 5 rue des capucins, 69001 Lyon, Tel: 04 78 28 88 60

Public Transportation
Lyon has several methods of public transportation:


 * Metro : 4 lines, one of them (line D) is automatic with a high rate of passage
 * Bus and trolley (100+ lines)
 * Tramway (3 lines)
 * Funicular (2 lines)
 * Bike : Velo'v, low cost bike hire service with a lot of stations throughout the city (1€ per week)

You will find general information on Wikipedia. On this page, we only put tips and details that are useful for couchsurfers.

You can find a map of the TCL (Transports en Commun Lyonnais) public transportation network here (TCL).

Tickets & Fares
There are a lot of ways to utilize transportation tickets in Lyon. Firstly, Lyon is not huge and if you're young and healthy you can easily walk to all of the touristic and party spots. If you prefer to use the public transportation, it is probably best to buy a pack of 10 tickets. Your host may also keep tickets for his/her guests.


 * A single ticket is 1€60 and is valid for 1 hour without return.
 * A pack of 10 tickets is 12€80, and 11€10 for students under 28 years old with a current student card.
 * A 2-hour-freedom ticket is 2€20, but it can't be used before 9am.
 * A daily ticket is 4€40. During July and August, people younger than 21 years old can get a special ticket for 3€10.
 * A night-freedom ticket is 2€20, valid after 7pm until the end of service.
 * A special return ticket for the funicular (useful for visiting fourviere) is 2€20.

If you have a MasterCard or Visa with a chip (it doesn't work all the time, but you can try), you can rent a bike with Velo'v. There are 340 self-service kiosks in operation 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, to pick up and drop off the bicycles throughout Lyon and its suburbs. Ask locals for assistance or check out the English version of the website ahead of time (Vélo'v); it may help since everything is in French!

Trains
Lyon has two SNCF train stations (Lyon-Perrache and Lyon-Part-Dieu), linking the city by TGV to Paris and the Mediterranean (about 2 hours each).

Lyon Airport
The Airport can be reached from the train station Part Dieu and the tram stations Vaulx-en-Velin La Soie or Meyzieu Z.I. with the Rhônexpress train Rhônexpress every 15 minutes between 6.00 am and 9.00 pm and every 30 minutes from 5.00am to 6.00 am and 9.00 pm to midnight.The price is about 13€ one way and 23 € go/return.

Lyon

Carpooling
You can find a driver or passenger to share the ride and cut on travel cost. In France carpooling is very popular and is called "covoiturage".

Try Envoiture.fr to get to Lyon.

Hitchiking
You can find spots hitchiking on this page :hitch:Lyon

In Case of Emergency


From fixed telephones:


 * Medical help/Ambulance - 15
 * Police - 17 
 * Fire - 18

 ****If calling from a cell/mobile telephone, dial "112" for any emergency sit==General Information</FONT>==uation.****