Any advice on where to stay in Lyon

sainté - lyon is 45m by train (R/T 23€) or 1h by car. it's not the worst little town in the world but it only takes about half an hour to see the sights, whereas lyon is one of the most beautiful cities in europe. for hotels i can't help much but i doubt any difference in cost would offset travel costs.

to get to paris or marseilles you come down to lyon anyway, the line Paris-Lyon-Marseille is the main drag of the TGV system.

there's lots of info about getting to the lyon stadium (which is not actually in lyon but bab-el-oued) in the stadium thread of the france board.

 

well, i live a couple of blocks from Venissieux; it's got a ghetto reputation but first, that only refers to a couple of projects, not the whole municipality, and even those compared to US standards are pretty safe. with an exact address i could help you more, Venissieux is quite big and varied.

from Gare de Venissieux it's 4 métro stops to Grange Blanche. from there a tram takes you to an external stadium parking area with shuttles that run as fast as they can load them, about 1 every minute. There's no great way to get to the stadium now that they've moved out to the middle of nowhere but i've found that that's the least bad way. about 40 minutes to the stadium entrance from Gare de Venissieux.

 

it's an industrial area. absolutely nothing to see or do there, but there's a bus line that runs down it that gets you to the gare de venissieux in just a few minutes.

 

it's right at the RR station, from where tram shuttles leave for the stadium, and right across from the biggest mall in town, hard to beat for convenience. it's a good, comfortable business hotel from what i've heard.

 

the stadium is out in Décines about 10-12km from the center of town. there are two ways to get there by tram: a special leaves from the Part-Dieu train station downtown and goes right to the stadium in 20 min. the other os the normal T3/T5 line that takes you to an exterior parking lot from where shuttle buses leave for the stadium as fast as they can fill 'em.

http://www.parc-ol.com/acces/

is an official page on how to get there - i'm surprised it's not in english but the whole OL website is being relooked (today) and so far they only have the french, korean and chinese versions up, so maybe this page will be in english soon.

 

i made a little booboo there - just to be perfectly accurate the line that takes you to the parking lot is T2/T5... actually only T5 but T2 takes you to T5 it's basically the same line most of the way. T3 is the normal line that leaves from the Part-Dieu. it follows the same track as the special but leaves you about half a mile away instead of taking the spur right to the stadium.

 

i work there. whaddaya wanna know?

Villeurbanne is the 10th arrdt. of Lyon in a way. it's absolutely urban and has a metro line running through it. in the western part it's downtown, as you go east it becomes residential and out by the périphérique, industrial. the neighborhoods with the most life are Gratte-ciel (very nice) and Charpennes.

to get to the stadium you can take metro line B at Charpennes to Part-Dieu or metro line A the other way to Vaulx La Soie, there are trams to the stadium from both those places.

 

pretty much in a dead zone, but not dangerous (Vaulx has a bad reputation but doesn't apply here), there will be nothing to do there.

the way into town is bus line 37 which runs pretty frequently and goes to Place Charpennes, where you can get metro for either downtown or for the Gare Part-Dieu. Shuttles will leave for the stadium from there. You can also get to the stadium via Vaulx-en Velin La Soie where a tram goes there direct.