Pérouges, the medieval city (France)

 

After the trip to Troyes, a city that I really enjoyed, I took a ticket to Pérouges located not far from Lyon.

Why this town? Well because it is one of the most beautiful villages in France and the photos speak for themselves.

The city can be visited quite quickly and a round trip on one day is largely enough. So I took the train at Gare de Lyon (in Paris) on May 27th at 10am (1h56) then the TER at Gare de Lyon Part-Dieu (in Lyon) towards Gare Meximieux-Pérouges (trip of 31 minutes with a connection of 16 minutes between the two trains); the journey took about 2h45 in total.

Once arrived at the Gare Meximieux-Pérouges, I had to walk about 20 minutes to reach the village. The sun was finally there, the short walk through Meximieux, then Pérouges, was nice, despite the fact that there are some small climbs.

The village is definitely worth a visit, it is very cute, and the sunny day made the visit very enjoyable.

Attention, munissez-vous de baskets ou de chaussures de marche, escarpins déconseillés. En effet, toutes les rues du village sont pavées.Be careful, take sneakers or walking shoes, stiletto not recommended. Indeed, all the streets of the village are paved.

In fact, the village can be visited in less than 2 hours, if you don’t plan to visit the few museums or shops in the city.

The stone houses dotted with pretty flowers and shrubs are definitely worth a visit.

There were not many people, apart from groups of schoolchildren and a few other visitors, so taking pictures was easy as pie.

I tasted the sweet speciality of the village, the Pérouges cake. This cake is a kind of sugar pie. I accompanied it with a nice glass of fresh cider.

Pérouges cake

For the way back, once arrived at Crémieux La Pape station with the TER (station just before Lyon Part-Dieu), the train driver announced that the TER would not be able to stop at Lyon Part-Dieu because of a suspicious parcel located in this station (I received a text message from the SNCF telling me that my train to Paris would not be able to leave).

The TER parked about 15 minutes in Crémieux La Pape then the driver told us that he would stop at another station from where we had to take a TER to go to Gare Lyon-Perrache.

I arrived in Lyon-Perrache with other travellers who also had to take a connection to Paris or other cities requiring a departure from Lyon Part-Dieu, I looked at the billboards and the train following mine (mine had to leave at 5:04) had to leave at 5:21 pm for Paris but was also late. As the minutes ticked by, the one of 5:51 pm was also late.

In the end, a train arrived at the station around 6:00 pm and left about 15mn after. I was able to take it without having to buy another ticket. With a lady having the same concern as mine, we asked the controller if we could take that train. He replied yes, but that the seats were not guaranteed, which is normal since it was not our original train.

Finally, we were able to sit down without any problem.

The train did not stop at Lyon Part-Dieu and was direct to Paris.

The train driver, who was quite funny in each of his announcements, told us that we would arrive in Paris at 8:45 pm; we arrived at 8:35.