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.
Comments