Another Adventure and A Surprise Trip to Amberieu

Every time we come to Lyon we do our best to factor in a short trip (pilgrimage?) to Tain-l'Hermitage and Valrhona, the maker of absolutely wonderful chocolate.  We also typically have lunch at The Nice, a very nice restaurant on the Rhone River, and make a stop at the Chapoutier tasting room where we taste a few wines and purchase some. Tain is just a one-hour train ride from Lyon.  A very enjoyable way to spend a lovely, sunny day!

View of Tain-l'Hermitage from the river.
The Nice restaurant is just beyond those trees.

So we consulted our calendar, checked the weather in Tain for the days we decided would be best, and went online to purchase our train tickets. We soon had our tickets for the round trip printed and were ready for our trip.  The next day we arrived at the Gare Part Dieu with tickets in hand ready to go.  We checked the reader board to see which track our train would be on.  The reader board said the train would be on track I, since out train was due to leave soon, we walked to track I, and found seats on the waiting train.  Easy peasy – right?  Wrong!

Our first clue that something was amiss came when the train left a few minutes early.  SNCF (Société Nationale des Chemins de Fer Français) trains generally leave at the time scheduled – and definitely not early.  Our second clue came when David determined that we were going north not south to Tain-l'Hermitage.  Before long the SNCF employee came into the car to check tickets.  Fortunately, he was very gracious and helpful when David explained our problem.  The gentleman told us that our train was actually leaving from that same track I a few minutes after the one we were on.  He explained that our next stop was going to be Amberieu where we would get on a train taking us back to Lyon.  He wrote on David’s ticket and also put his official SNCF stamp on it so we wouldn’t have to pay extra.

David's ticket with notation and stamps.

So we were off to Ambérieu-en-Bugey, a town of about 12,000 residents, is about 50 km northeast of Lyon and is known for being an important railway junction and also for being awarded the Croix de Guerre 1939-1945 with citation at the Liberation. Impressive! David had been to the town on one of his bike rides, but this was new territory for Anna. What little we saw of it looked like a very pleasant little town.  We moved into the train station to wait for our train back to Lyon.  

The gare at Ambérieu-en-Bugey

David bought a newspaper for us to read, and we discussed what to do with the rest of our day. We would be arriving in Lyon at around noon so David felt we should have lunch in a restaurant as a mini celebration.  Afterall, the SNCF man was very pleasant and helpful, no one was hurt, and our only damage was that we would have to reschedule our trip to Tain and buy another train ticket.  Sometimes you just have to count your blessings.