After breakfast at the Crowne Plaza Geneva, we checked out and took the hotel’s shuttle to Geneva Airport. After spending some time at two airport lounges, we flew on United Airlines back to Dulles.
Morning
After waking up at the Crowne Plaza Geneva, we had breakfast at the hotel restaurant. It was complimentary thanks to our Diamond status with IHG‘s One Rewards program. The buffet selection was relatively large but the food quality was a bit mediocre.
The weather outside was overcast when we checked out.
After taking the hotel’s shuttle bus to the airport, we checked in with United and proceeded through security. We noticed some decorations for the upcoming Christmas holidays. We visited both the Swiss Senator Lounge and the Aspire contract lounge past passport control.
When in Switzerland, have products with Swiss milk!
Our aircraft, a Boeing 767-300.
Snow was forecast for today. Although it did not snow in the city, we could see from the terminal that there was fresh snow on the small mountains to the northwest in France. The snow line appears to be just above the airport’s elevation.
Geneva to Dulles
We boarded around 10:30am and settled into Polaris business class.
We took off around 11:30am and were on our way back home to Dulles.
We always skip meal service when flying east to Europe from the US to maximize sleep time. However, for daytime flights back to the US, we have lunch before sleeping for a few hours.
United’s meal service is nothing to write home about. The sundae is typically decent though.
We had the pre-arrival meal as well somewhere over New York state as we got closer to Virginia.
Post Trip Thoughts
Although the weather didn’t entirely cooperate this time, we still had an excellent trip to Lyon! We did try to save indoor activities for rainy days, but it did rain more than we anticipated.
The InterContinental Lyon was a fantastic place to stay. We appreciated our nice room in the renovated Hรดtel-Dieu. The location was convenient as well as it was near a Metro station and not too far of a walk from the tram across the Rhรดne. The breakfast was a bit weak for an InterContinental though. But, as it was complimentary with our IHG Diamond status, we still greatly appreciated the convenience and cost savings as a result.
Given the proximity of Geneva to Lyon, we could have simply stayed in Lyon for one extra evening. However, SNCF isn’t really as reliable as SBB so we preferred to spend the last night in Geneva to avoid any potential transportation problems on the morning of our flight home.
As we spent most of the trip taking the train from Lyon Part-Dieu, staying closer to the station would have been beneficial. We had considered the Pullman, right next to the station. But ultimately, we went with and were happy with the InterContinental.
We had quite a long list, or rather marked locations on Google Maps, of potential places to visit. We ended up skipping all the locations near the Mediterranean, basically Provence, as the train schedules from Lyon generally weren’t great. United has seasonal non-stop service from Dulles to Nice so we’ll have to make that a future trip.
While at times trying to find places to eat was inconvenient, particularly with the times that restaurants are open, we definitely enjoyed the bouchons in Lyon. The food was excellent and the prices were reasonable. And we were pleased that we did not encounter a single waiter that asked us to tip!
The biggest surprise of the trip was our visit to Beaune! We only decided to visit because of poor weather at every other location near Lyon and to the south. We lucked out in coming across the yearly Hospices de Beaune wine auction! But, even if we had visited on some other day, there would have still been plenty to see and do.