Train Travel

High-speed TGV trains depart Paris’s Gare de Lyon hourly and arrive in Lyon just two hours later. There are also two to eight TGVs daily between Paris's Charles de Gaulle Airport and Lyon. Two in-town train stations and a third at the airport (Lyon-Saint-Exupéry) make the city a major transportation hub. The Gare de la Part-Dieu (Bd. Vivier-Merle) is used for the TGV routes and links Lyon with many other cities, including Bordeaux, Montpellier, and Marseilles, along with Grenoble. On the other side of town, the centre-ville station at Gare de Perrache (Cours de Verdun, Pl. Carnot 04–72–56–95–30) is the more crowded option and serves all the sights of the centre ville—many trains stop at both stations. The TGV station at Aéroport-Lyon-Saint-Exupéry serves Avignon, Arles, Valence, Annecy, Aix-les-Bains, and Chambéry, as well as Paris. The TGV also has a less frequent service to Grenoble, where you can connect to local SNCF trains headed for villages in the Alps. For the Beaujolais Wine Country, most people travel to Villefranche-sur-Saône's station on Place de la Gare; trains run to smaller towns from here.

Train Contacts

SNCF. 3635; www.sncf.fr.