Free travel has been the part of this cross cultural I have been so excited for since before we left! Three of my peers and I were originally going to go to Geneva, Switzerland, but there were a sudden change of plans. So, we decided to go to Lyon, France for our 3.5 days. We figured it wasn’t too far from our departing station, Basel, Switzerland. It also wasn’t too far from our meeting destination, Strasbourg, France. Getting to Lyon was easier than I thought it was going to be. Walking around a city I have never been to before wasn’t half bad either. The places we visited were over a mile away from our Airbnb place, but it was an easy walk. On Tuesday, we went to the Basilique of Notre-Dame de Fourvière.

We admired the view (pictured below) for a good 15 minutes before going inside to look at the basilica and crypt. Afterwards, we went down onto the Renaissance district called Vieux Lyon. We ate lunch at a pizza shop and walked around some other cute, little shops.

Wednesday we decided to do a day trip to Paris since it was only a 2-hour train ride. Once in Paris, we headed over to the Notre Dame. The cathedral was breathtaking! We spent about 15 minutes inside. Once done there, we went to the Louvre. This is where the Mona Lisa is. We ate our lunch while in line to get through security. See, Kim has always gone to the grocery store to get sandwich making ingredients because it is cheaper. So, that’s what we did. We went to a Simply City and bought ingredients to make PB&Js! This was perfect because we didn’t have to go sit down and wait for our food to come out. We spent 2 hours there and I’m sure we didn’t get to see everything because it’s just that big. We were also on a tight schedule. After the Louvre, we walked to the Eiffel Tower! This was my favorite part of the day. We went up to the 2nd floor. The view from there was amazing!

Free travel was definitely a learning experience with a bunch of firsts, but I wouldn’t trade the experiences or memories for anything.