Road Tips

Carlton Hotel - Lyon

During our trip to France for Focal loudspeakers, they put us up in three hotels in the heart of Lyon.  Since I'm not a smoker, they put me in the Mercure Carlton Hotel, an ornate old hotel that caters to non-smokers.  The hotel sits right in between the Rhone and Saone rivers in the center of Lyon (see map).  The hotel is an Accor property, the largest chain of hotels in Europe.  Actually, I think I've stayed in nothing but Accor hotels on my trips to Europe. 

The Carlton, which was built in 1892, offers 83 rooms that range in price from about 89 Euros to 179 Euros a night (about $135 to $275 a night).  They had a list of a number of celebrities and dignitaries who have stayed at the hotel over the years.  I only recognized a handful of the names listed. 

I got a standard room with a small watercloset, a bed that literally filled up the room, and a large bathroom with a full bath and a bidet.  The air conditioner was lousy and I had to close off the doors to the bathroom and water closet just to get it comfortable in the room at night. 

One of the weird things about the bathroom at the Carlton was that the tub/shower had no shower curtain.  Here's the picture of the shower.  It was sort of tricky to not get water all over the bathroom.  The walls and floor had a very heavy tile on them and it could stand getting water splashed all around.  But it was all I could do to keep from making a big mess in the bathroom.  I was joking with one of my colleagues when I said I wanted to sell shower curtains to hotels in France.  I'd retire a multi-millionaire. 

The Carlton's lobby and bar area offers a lot of old world charm.  We spent a lot of time socializing in the bar and it was very comfortable and inviting.  The lighting was subdued, there was artwork and bunting on the walls and the architecture was pure French with a theater and opera theme to the room.  There was an old Yamaha piano in the bar that could either play pre-downloaded music, or could be played manually.  One of our dealers from Dayton, OH showed his prowess on the piano by playing a couple selections one evening.   It turned out that he had studied at Juilliard and had even played on stage at Carnegie Hall.  He was a very talented dude.     

One of the more neat old world things about the Carlton was it's elevator, or as they call it in Europe, the lift.  It was an open elevator and you had to manually close an outer door gate and then shut the two inside doors before the elevator would work.  The problem is that if someone got out on an upper floor and didn't close the outside gate to the elevator, the elevator didn't move.  That happened a couple times while we were there.  And it's a long walk up and down the Carlton's stairs.  The above picture is my colleague, Jon Baker, getting into the elevator and closing the outer gate. 

The bedroom area and the bathroom in my room had these floor to ceiling windowed doors that opened up and afforded a great view of the bustling street below.  It was really kind of neat to open the doors and get an outside feeling to the room.  It was like the room doubled in size when the doors were opened. 

Just down the street from the Carlton - actually in the same building as the hotel - is one of the most celebrated restaurants not only in Lyon, but all of France - Restaurant Nicholas Le Bec.  Chef Nicholas Le Bec is world renown chef whose seven course meals start at around $120 Euros ($175 bucks).  I actually had a chance to join John Barnes, the owner of Audio Unlimited in Denver, for lunch one day.  But I ended up passing as it would have been $100 bucks without wine and/or drinks, and would have probably been a three hour lunch. 

Still, the Carlton Hotel was in the middle of most of the main attractions in Lyon.   Other than some of the funkiness in the room itself, the hotel was a good place to stay.

La Tour Rose - Lyon, France

Everytime I've been to France, I usually end up with some sort of a stomach problem.  I think I've finally pin-pointed it to eating fish.  One of the meals we had while in Lyon this summer was at La Tour Rose and I had fish.  And the next day, I had stomach problems. 

I don't know what it is about the fish in France.  Maybe there's not enough mercury in the fish there, I really don't know.  Oh, the fish we had at La Tour Rose was very good, served with some vegetables with a cream sauce.  But each time I've had fish in France, the next day it's "Outta my way!  I gotta go!"

Once again, one of the major problems in traveling with a large group is that you usually don't get many - if any - choices for dinner.  It's usually a pre-determined menu that is offered for large groups.  This time it was either a choice of chicken or a sea bass filet.  Chicken just didn't sound good to me, so I went with the fish.  While the fish was very tasty, it was a bad choice. 

La Tour Rose is a combination hotel and restaurant in the old section of Lyon just over the Rhone River conveniently located on Rue Boeuf, or "Beef Street" (see map).  It has a wonderful bar area on the street level next to the check in desk for the hotel.  The restaurant is on the second floor and features a wonderful outdoor terrace.  Our group, due to its size, was seated in the restaurant and not outside.  Too bad as it was a beautiful evening in Lyon. 

The restaurant/hotel is housed in a building that was used in the 16th and 17th centuries as a textile manufacturing facility.  This is a picture of the tower where silk was made at the top and allowed to flow to the bottom.  I took this picture during my walkabout in the old city of Lyon in 2006.  This tower is where La Tour Rose (The Red Tower) gets its name from.  Little did I know that in a little over two years I'd be back here eating at the restaurant. 

Actually, the area in which La Tour Rose is located is populated with a number of great little cafes and restaurants.  As I've said before, Lyon is the gastronomic capital of France and Europe.  There are just hundreds of great little restaurants all over the city.  It's very difficult to find poor food in Lyon.

While the food at La Tour Rose was wonderful, the next afternoon I made a note to never have fish again when I go to France.  For me, it's better to go hungry than have to endure the stomach problems again and again from eating fish in France.

Le Passage - Lyon, France

Lyon is called the gastronomic capital of Europe.  More world class restaurants are in Lyon than any other place on the continent.  One of the best places to eat in Lyon is a place called Le Passage.  And we ate there one evening when we were over in France earlier this year.  

Le Passage is owned by Vincent Carteron and the head chef is Frederic Cordier.  Cordier is known for coming up with interesting dishes such as marbled foie gras with figs, lobster stew with cumin and a fricassee nut seafood casserole with thyme.  Unfortunately, we weren't able to try any of those items.

The main dining area of Le Passage is rather classy and ornate with heavy tables and padded red leather chairs.  Chandeliers hang from the ceiling and wonderful pieces of art adorn the walls.  Unfortunately, we didn't sit in the main dining room.  

Being that we were a large group of 30 people, we were seated in the private banquet facility on the second level of Le Passage, called Le Club.  And when you're dealing with that many people, your choices of food are limited.  Once again, it was a beef dish - a veal shank with a red wine sauce; and a seafood dish - salmon with a dill cream sauce.  Once again, I try to avoid fish like the plague while in France, so I went with the veal shank.

Before the main course was served, we were served a salad with a slice of foie gras on top.  The salad was OK, but the foie gras was fabulous.  I know some people have a problem with foie gras, especially by the way ducks are forced fed to enlarge their livers.  I don't have a problem with it.  Especially when I eat good foie gras. 

The veal shank wasn't great, it wasn't bad.  It was similar to "assembly-line" food that I've had in the states.  To help things out, we had a number of great wines from the Rhone wine region, of which Lyon is in the heart of.  I'm not as well-versed in French wines as I'd like to be, so I've been taking pictures of different the bottles of wine I've been drinking while in France.  It helps me remember what it was that I was drinking, plus I can see if a place like Sam's Wines has the wine.

I talked to a couple of colleagues who told me they'd eaten at Le Passage a couple times before.  They said the experience of banquet-style eating was nowhere close to the previous times they'd had dinner off of the regular menu.  The Michelin Guide gives Le Passage two stars which means "excellent cooking, worth a detour".  I would like to give it a shot sometime when I'm not involved in such a big group.  Hopefully, one of these days I'll have the chance. 

La Grignotte - Bourbon-Lancy, France

During our trip to France earlier this summer, we boarded a bus in Lyon and rode about 2.5 hours to the small village of Bourbon-Lancy, located in the Burgundy region of France (see map).  The village, itself, has a ton of history behind it as it was once a medieval walled city.  Focal's cabinet plant, Guy H.F., is located in Bourbon-Lancy employing third and fourth generation cabinet makers from the original furniture maker that started in the late 1800's. 

The drive up through the French farm fields and vineyards was a continual photo opportunity.  The rolling hills in the central part of France were green and lush.  This was the second trip I've made up to Bourbon-Lancy, but the first time it was in the summer months.  It was a beautiful day with a hot sun and low humidity.

We were greeted at the factory by Jean-Paul Guy, the part-owner/general manager of the cabinet factory.  Jean-Paul's grandfather started the cabinet factory as a furniture shop in the late 1800's.  Over the years, the company grew to make not only furniture, but cabinets, as well.  And at one point, it employed 10 people in an automobile body shop.  Focal bought controlling interest of Guy's cabinet shop in 1999 and they now exclusively make cabinets for Focal's high-end loudspeakers.

Since it was late morning in Bourbon-Lancy, the tour coordinators with Focal thought it would be nice to take a walk to the old part of Bourbon-Lancy and have lunch at a little restaurant.  The streets in the center of the city are very narrow.  And many of the buildings in the center of the village date back to the 14th century. 

As I said, Bourbon-Lancy was once a medieval walled city.   This was the main entrance to the old city which was built back in the 13th century.  Bourbon-Lancy's history dates back nearly 2000 years.  The village plays up the medieval theme and has restored a number of the buildings in the center of the city to their original state.  Click on the picture above and look toward the very top.  They have a dummy of a medieval sentry looking out of the window of the bell tower. 

Just up the street from the main entrance of the old city is a little restaurant called La Grignotte.  I ate there one time before on my first visit to Bourbon-Lancy and I remember it being very good.

The inside of La Grignotte is very small and cozy.  Since we had a party of around 30 in our group, there was going to be no way we could all fit inside the restaurant.  What they did was set up a number of tables on the street (which in reality is now nothing more than a very wide sidewalk) and put up a number of umbrellas to shade us from the hot June sun.  It wasn't as comfortable as sitting inside, but it worked out pretty well.

Here is a portion of our group getting ready to enjoy their lunch.  Note my colleague, Todd, in the white shirt.  He had to sit in the sun because he was wearing a light colored shirt.  They gave him a series of hats to wear during lunch so he wouldn't get sunburned on his face.  One was an old time straw hat that made him look like Maurice Chevalier.  Then he wore a sailor's hat that made him look like Gilligan.  He took the good-natured ribbing in stride. 

We had our choice of either beef (a tenderloin filet) or fish (a salmon filet).  Something about fish in France doesn't agree with me, so I took the beef.  But before we got our main entree, they offered us a series of appetizers.  One of the appetizers was escargot - snails cooked in a butter and garlic sauce.  Well, I'd never had escargot before and I thought I'd give it a try. 

This is what it looked like as it was served to me.  With a little trepidation, I took my first bite.  Suddenly, it didn't look quite so disgusting.  It was just heavenly!  Oh, my God, the escargot tasted so great.  I can't believe I've never tried them before.  They were simply out of this world.

Soon after, our main entrees showed up.  It was a nice chunk of beef tenderloin, along with potatoes au gratin and a salad topped with a poppy seed dressing.  I'm not certain that I've ever had the salad served on the plate with the main entree, but when in France, do as the French do, I guess. 

Now, I ordered my steak medium-rare.  I've noticed over the years of traveling stateside with Europeans, they have a tendency to order their beef rare.  I see why - medium in France is medium-rare in America.  Which means medium-rare in France is, well, rare. This thing was still "mooing" when I cut into it.  A few of the people in their group asked to send their meat back to get it cooked a little longer, but I went ahead and ate mine like this.  It was very good - probably the best cut of beef I've ever had in my trips to France.

Of course, lunch in France can take two hours or more.  With all the food and wine, I don't know how anyone can work in the afternoon.  And on top of all that, they then brought out dessert.  Now, I'm not just talking about *a* dessert, I'm talking about a ton of desserts to choose from.  This one was a custard cake that was absolutely fabulous. 

Also on the dessert tray was this delectable peach pie.  It was interesting that the peaches were placed on top of the crust and not as a filling.  I didn't try any of the pie, but those who did said it was very good.  I can tell you I'd certainly never seen a peach pie like that before.

And this was an interesting combination - this was a date or fig pie with real chocolate pudding.  And I mean real chocolate pudding, not that powdery stuff you mix in a bowl.  It was sinful, to say the least.

We got a big kick out of the presentation of the chocolate pudding when they brought it out to the table.  It was all in a huge bowl and they just happened to set it down in front of my boss, Daniel.  We were wondering if he was going to share it with us.  Here's Daniel with Jean-Paul seated next to him fronted by the bowl of pudding.

After lunch, a few of us strolled down the little walkway of the old village of Bourbon-Lancy and found this wonderful little flower garden just a stone's throw from the restaurant.  This was actually the site of a religious school/college for monks that was originally founded in the 1400's.  It was such a beautiful day and a beautiful setting that we sort of hung around the area for a few moments. 

Here are a row of flowers and roses planted along an ancient wall in the garden.  Bourbon-Lancy is also well-known throughout Europe as having natural thermal water pools.  People travel from all over to a spa located outside the city to luxuriate in the warm natural spring waters.  The area has long been a place where Europe's elite have traveled to enjoy the warm natural waters of the thermal spa.

Just up from where we ate is this church - Church of the Sacred Heart - that was built in the late 1800's.  This cathedral was built in the neo-gothic style and sits on the site of a convent that was destroyed during the  .  There's also a small museum in the church which shows artifacts from previous churches in the area.  At one point in time, Bourbon-Lancy had 15 houses of religion in the town, including the aforementioned monk college and a monk convent, and two women's convents. 

The inside of the church was equally as impressive as the outside.  I'm not much of a religious guy, but it would be sort of cool to attend services just to take in the experience.  For a warm day in the central part of France, the church was cool inside and felt good to stand in there out of the hot sun for a few moments. 

Walking back to the restaurant, here is a picture of the bell tower from the other side.  It's a pretty impressive structure once you figure out that it was built in the 13th century.  This small area hosted a small number of bistro-type restaurants and bars. 

When we walked back to the factory, we went through an old estate that now housed what I was told was the park commission for the city of Bourbon-Lancy.  The grounds of the estate were now a park maintained by the city and had a number of exotic trees planted on the grounds.  I would have liked to have walked through the building.

One of the exotic trees that were planted on the grounds was this giant redwood tree brought over from California.  A couple of the dealers from California were incredulous that a giant sequoia tree was standing in France, but that's what the plaque at the base of the tree signified it was.  There were a number of other fruit trees, flowering bushes and berry-bushes located on the old estate.  I'm sure the long-ago owner of the estate planted them as many were very mature in size. 

After our factory tour, Jean-Paul took us up to a small church just up the hill from the plant.  Jean-Paul was the head of a group who was restoring the church and turning it into a small art museum.  This church was the only one left standing in Bourbon-Lancy after the French Revolution and it wasn't being used for much of anything.  The original structure dates back to the 12th century.  But a group of people have put in a lot of long hours and hard work to restore the structure.

Here's a picture of some of the restoration work they've done inside the church.  Two original tombs remain in the church, including one that has been opened and the skull and bones of the person entombed in the concrete casket are on display.  It was really kind of neat.  Jean-Claude told me it has taken about three years of volunteer efforts to get the church/museum to where it is today.  And there's still a lot of work to do before it's finished.

A number of artists had works on display on the walls of the church.  This one was a photo exhibit from a photographer.  He had some very pretty female subjects hauntingly posed for the camera.  I wish I had an eye for photography like that guy had. 

The church also had a very beautiful 15' X 15' tapestry that was being restored.  I took a picture of it, but it was too dark in the building for it to come out.  I tried it with the flash and it didn't look very good, either.  I probably could have futzed with my camera for a few moments to get the right exposure, but I didn't.  Thinking back, I should have taken the time because it was pretty cool.

After a quick walk back to the factory, it was time to say our good-byes and hop on the bus back to Lyon.  Bourbon-Lancy is one of those quaint little French villages with a load history behind it.  I certainly learned more about the place in the six hours we were there than I did on my previous visit.  Of course, it helps when you can walk around and see the sights along the way.  

Diana Krall - Vienne, France

As part of our trip to France recently, Focal took the North American sales managers and the handful of dealers who made the trip to Vienne, home of Jazz a Vienne, one of the largest jazz festivals in the world.  And it turned out the evening we went, the Grammy Award winning jazz artist, Diana Krall, was performing that evening.  

Jazz a Vienne takes place at a number of venues in the city, but the main venue is an ancient amphitheater built by the Romans some 2000 years ago.  When it was originally built, it held 13,000 people.  Today, the Roman Theater, as it's called, holds just over 8,000 for concerts.  The slope of the amphitheater and the sight of the old fortress above was just breathtaking.  It could be the best venue I've ever been to for a musical concert.   

Before the concert, Focal hosted the North Americans to a V.I.P. party at the old university near the Roman Theater.  It was called "Jazz en Vignes" (Jazz and Wine) and featured a winery from the rich Rhone Valley wine making region.  They served white and red wines along with hors d oveurs for about an hour and a half before the concert.  It was set in the courtyard of the school and it was a pretty cool deal.

Now, a lot of people were asking me what this V.I.P. party was all about.  Honestly, I didn't know much about it, but I sort of wondered if this was going to be a meet and great with Diana Krall.  I wasn't all that certain as to what the party would entail, even up until the time we got there.  However, there was another group sharing the party area with us that evening and one of the ladies in the group looked strikingly like Diana Krall.  So, I'm standing at a table with one of my colleagues, Chris, and a couple of the dealers and I said, "Oh, so Diana Krall DID show up for this thing." 

The guys turned their heads and looked at the lady.  One of them said, "That's not Diana Krall."

I said, "Bullshit!  That's her, all right.  This is a meet and greet before her show.  That's how much pull Focal has with this jazz festival." 

I was pulling their leg, for sure, but for a moment I had those guys and a few others believing it was Diana Krall.  This lady looked very much like her. 

But then I noticed that a LOT of ladies in the crowd that evening looked like Diana Krall.  I don't know if it was just coincidence, or if they were purposely trying to capture her look.  It was pretty uncanny. 

Our seats at the ancient Roman Theater were a bit off to the side and Diana Krall would have her back to us.  Still, they were good seats.  And the P.A. system was manufactured by a French company called L'Acoustics.  It turns out that Focal makes the speaker drivers for L'Acoustics' P.A. system.  Some of the same components that go into some of Focal's higher end home loudspeakers are part of the L'Acoustics P.A.  

Even though Diana Krall would have her back to us for the performance, we had a large monitor right next to us to be able to watch her facial expressions as she played the piano and sang.  It actually worked out pretty well as we could catch the action live on stage or on the huge monitor not more than 30 feet away. 

I wouldn't say I was a huge Diana Krall fan, but I do enjoy her work.  And I think she has genuine fun playing her music along with her back up musicians.  There was a lot of smiling on stage when she was playing.  I love it when musicians look like they're truly having fun playing music than some of the more serious or angry looks some performers will give during a show. 

But the highlight of the show had to be the venue.  It was a beautiful night in France, low humidity, light wind, not a cloud in the sky.  The sun sets late there so it was still a beautiful sun lit evening well up to 10:30 p.m.  The seats at the Roman Theater are the original stone seats, so Focal provided us seating pads for the evening.  Those things certainly came in handy because there would have been no way I would have been able to sit there for the nearly three and a half hours we were there.  I just found myself staring up at the crowd and taking in the majestic beauty of the ancient amphitheater.  I'm in still in awe of the process the Romans went through to build the place 2000 years ago.

Opening for Diana Krall was Avishai Cohen, a world-renown jazz bass player who was the bass player for Chick Corea's jazz trio and who has accompanied the likes of Herbie Hancock and Bobby McFerrin.   Accompanying Cohen this even was the 21-year-old piano prodigy Shai Maestro.  Cohen played his upright bass with such energy and conviction that he had the crowd on its feet at the end of his performance.  Many of the songs they played that evening were from Cohen's recently released album, "Gently Disturbed".  I really liked the free form nature of his music and his passionate playing helped draw me into the music.

Sometimes I bitch and moan about my job - the travel, the long hours, the politics involved.  But a night like this certainly makes me put a different perspective on my job.  We were treated wonderfully, it was a superb evening, the venue was awesome and the music was great.  I turned to my colleague, John, during the performance and said, "It certainly doesn't suck to be us this evening..."

I'm in France!

Right now, I'm in France for the unveiling of the new Focal Utopia G3 loudspeakers along with my North American sales colleagues and a handful of dealers from across Canada and the U.S.  On Tuesday evening, I flew from Moline to Detroit, then took an overnight flight to Amsterdam.  We arrived in Lyon, France on Wednesday mid-afternoon.  

After touring the cabinet factory on Thursday, we heard the new speaker today.  We've had some great meals and some good wine and I'll be sure to report on all the particulars.

But what I'm looking forward to is a performance tomorrow night of Diana Krall at the Jazz a Vienne 2008 festival that runs on weekends from mid-June to mid-July in Lyon.  The festival is held at an ancient amphitheater built by the Romans when Lyon was part of the ancient Roman Empire.  I'm sort of looking forward to that.

Then it will be a short night as I have a 7 a.m. flight from Lyon to Amsterdam (12 midnight back in Iowa), then going on to Minneapolis/St. Paul and home around 5 p.m. on Sunday.  This will be my shortest trip to France, which is fine with me.  But this will be the first time that I'm not in Paris for at least one night.   

Look for some of my France entries in the coming days!

Driving in France

We had a couple of the Renault Espace vans for rentals when we were over in France recently.  The engine is a 3.0 liter, V6 diesel and it incorporates a six speed transmission.  These little things actually will seat 7 somewhat comfortably, but don't think about putting any bags or carry-ons in the van when you try to put that many people in the thing, or you'll be carrying them on your lap. 

The Renault Espace had a little "git-up and go" from the start, but it was a real pooch when you needed to jump on it in second or third gear. 

One of the unique things about the Renault Espace was the way you started it up.  First of all, there is no key.  The "key" is a card about the size of a normal credit card that you insert into a space next to the stick shift.  Once the card was inserted into the slot, you hit the "Start/Stop" button to start the car.  The vehicle automatically went into the parking brake mode when you'd start it up. 

I got to drive one day and it's a little weird to drive in France.  No, you drive on the right, like you do in the States.  But the yields and right-of-ways are a little confusing.  Actually, you may be driving down a road and suddenly you come to an intersection where a road is coming in at angle.  It could very well be that the road coming in at the angle has the right of way.

And the signs are a little confusing.  I knew what the "yield" signs were all about, but I couldn't understand what the "no" with the blue inside meant.  (Found out later that it meant no parking.) 

Driving on the freeway system, or highway, was a little confusing since signs for exits seem to come up rather quickly, especially when you're going 90 kilometers (about 55 mph) or faster.  Or signs to towns, such as Saint-Etienne, don't always take you to Saint-Etienne.  Actually it took me a day to figure things out - both with the vehicle and with the directions - to make me feel comfortable enough to get around on my own.

We had to take the vans back on Thursday night, so our host, Dominic Baker (right) got one of my colleagues, Jon Baker (no relation to Dominic), and myself to follow him in the vans.  He took off from the hotel like a bat out of hell, screaming down the street, around the roundabout, then down one of the main streets in Saint-Etienne.  He got on it and passed a car and I followed suit, except I got hung up in the left lane and needed to turn right.  I aggressively nudged over and got in behind Jon who was smart enough to stay put in the right lane. 

We took a right and Dominic took off again up a hill.  The Espace just wouldn't keep up his Volkswagen Passat.  I was on Jon's tail and Dominic pulled over to the left lane and got into the left turn lane at the light.  He turned when the light went yellow, Jon followed suit when the light turned red.  I tried to follow, but got hung up by oncoming traffic - who, for some reason, didn't allow me to turn left when I had a red light and they had green.

I finally waited and turned left on a red light - hitting the median curb in doing so.  Hey, it was a rental!  And as I learned years ago, in times of need, you should treat all rental cars as off-road vehicles. 

I did catch up to Dominic and John with some more wild driving through the side streets of Saint-Etienne and then ended up going the wrong way down an alley way to drop off the vans in front of the Hertz rental office.  It was a large time to drive like that with a "devil-may-care" attitude behind the wheel.

But the hell of it is - they ALL drive like that in France.  Signs and rules, be damned.  You have to be overly aggressive or you're going to be going around and around the damn roundabouts for 15 to 20 minutes at a time.  Streets are narrow, the highways (freeways) are curvy, and then you have to worry about how main streets must yield to people coming in from side streets. 

I'm glad I've had years of driving experience in the Chicago area.  It has certainly schooled me on how to properly drive in France they way their drivers do.

The TGV

Even though you're not driving when you take the TGV in France, it's still one of the neatest experiences you can have while traveling. 

The letters "TGV" are short for "train a grand vitesse" or "high speed train" in French.  The TGV's are run by the French government's rail operator, SNCF.  The first TGV went between Paris and Lyon in the early 80's and since then more engines and lines have been built with a number of European countries connecting with the TGV's central hub in Paris. 

With speeds of up to 200 mph, the TGV has taken over as the primary way of moving people from city to city throughout France and parts of Western Europe.  It's especially appealing for trips of 3 hours or less because the train stations in most French cities are centrally located and there is minimal check-in and pre-boarding security that you find in most airports these days. 

Here's what happens when a TGV hits a magpie at 200 miles an hour.  Check out the lower left front of the TGV engine.  Most TGV lines have high fences and raised grades to all but cut down on the chance of a collision with an animal or motor vehicle. 

The TGV car cabins are spacious and comfortable.  With the low axles, the specially built tracks and the amazingly high speeds, the TGV is one of the smoothest rides one can have in any mode of transportation.  I have trouble staying awake when I ride on them.

And you should stay awake.  The French countryside between Paris and Lyon is sensational.  The rolling hills of Central France soon give way to the foothills of the Alps as you go further to the southeast. 

My colleagues and myself flew into Charles De Gaulle airport northeast of Paris and all met up at the train station within the airport.  The TGV has a direct line from the airport to the station in Lyon, France's second largest city.  The train station at De Gaulle is modern and clean (except they charge you 50 cents euro to use the bathrooms).  Not only can you board TGV's, but conventional trains can take you to points in Paris and beyond, as well.

The trip to Lyon is a shade over 2 hours.  Lyon is about 287 miles from Paris, so you're averaging speeds of about 140 miles an hour.  The French countryside zips by so quickly that it's tough to take pictures out of the window of the great views.

The train station in Lyon - Gare Lyon Part Dieu - is sort of a big shopping center and community hangout.  It's situated right smack dab in the center of Lyon and handles hundreds of thousands of people annually.  The "Part Two" part comes into play because Gare Lyon Part Dieu was built in the early 80's to accommodate the TGV's that began to come there from Paris. 

The train station in Saint-Etienne is part of a renovation area in the Ville Centre (central) area of town.  I remarked that the next time we come back, the area around the train station is going to be drastically different.  A number of shops, modern buildings and office areas are being built within 100 meters of the station. 

And Gare de Lyon, the main station in Paris for all points south and east, is one of the architectural marvels of western Europe.  Built between 1895 and 1902, the Gare de Lyon was designed by French architect Marius Toudoire and opened during the 1900 Exhibition Universelle (World's Fair) in Paris.

Toudoire was helped by over 30 artists to make the Gare de Lyon one of the most spectacular buildings in Paris.  Known primarily for it's stately clock tower, the Gare de Lyon was the starting point for thousands of Parisians who would make the annual trek to the Mediterranean coast for their vacations, or "holidays". 

The Gare de Lyon was modernized in the 70's and 80's to be able to handle not only the TGV's, but the increased traffic in and out of the station to and from Switzerland, Italy, Greece and the French Riviera. 

Traveling by train in France is a great experience.  I can't tell you how many times we wondered why there wasn't anything remotely close to this in the U.S.  One of our guys said that the airline lobby would never allow something like this to happen.  I know there have been studies about regional high speed rail lines between St. Louis and Chicago, Boston and Washington, Los Angeles and San Francisco - with trains that would approach the speeds acquired by the TGV.    

But if you ever get the chance to go to France and want to venture outside of Paris, take the TGV.  Just once.

Harry's New York Bar - Paris

I had the pleasure of going to France for business in February of 2003 with my company, Audio Plus Services.  We stayed a couple nights in Paris and had a chance to walk around the city and see the sights.  We went to the Eiffel Tower, the Louvre (although we didn't go in to see the Mona Lisa), the Arc de Triomphe, and Place de la Concorde.  We saw the artists and bohemians on the Left Bank, toured Notre Dame Cathedral, walked by the Opera House and Moulin Rouge, and we walked the length of the Champs d'Elysee - twice. 

But what I wanted to do more than anything was to go to Harry's New York Bar and get a Bloody Mary.  Now, the guys in our group kind of looked at me like, "Huh?"  But when I explained to them that Harry's invented the Bloody Mary in the 20's, they all followed suit. 

Actually, Harry's wasn't that far from the Opera House or our hotel.  It's not a huge place, but it's very ornate with a lot of dark wood paneling on the walls, covered with pictures and other offerings from over the years.  It's definitely got an English/American feel to the place as the staff and bartenders all spoke English - quite well, actually. 

We all had a Bloody Mary and it was a spot hitter.  It was a little expensive - 9.50 Euros, which, at the time, was about $9.00 US.  But what the hell.  I had two. 

We looked around the place and ended up going downstairs into their piano bar room.  One of the waiters let us go down, even though it wasn't open.  It wasn't very big, almost gave me a clausterphobic feel to it.  The waiter said that George Gershwin used to play the same piano they had in there when he was living in Paris years ago.  He said that people such as Elton John, Harry Connick, Jr., and Diana Krall had all been in the piano bar in recent months playing the piano.  Unfortunately, the lid was down and locked or I would have played chop sticks.

The walls of the piano bar were also adorned with some interesting French sketch art.  I kind of liked it, but some of the guys in the group were making noises about being bored, so we took off (always happens when you're in a group of people). 

I know that Harry's isn't a beer bar, and it probably isn't a destination, per se.  But I'm glad we went.