What a fascinating city Lyon is! You confidently set your sat nav and you arrive somewhere totally different but it has the address you put in

…later …much later we found out there are three section to Lyon all with the same addresses. Good job we asked.  So we managed to find a shopping centre (I’m good at that!) which was next to the Radisson Hotel – now the Radisson  is a really huge cylindrical red building that you can see from miles away but once you get to the city centre it seems to play hide and seek.

So, we found the mall next to the hotel but could not fathom out  how to get to the car park. Having eventually found the way into front reception (which was on floor 35!) we had to leave the children and go back to the mall car park with a member of their staff (in elaborate uniform) who then sat in the front with my husband and guided us through various tunnels to the front of the hotel.We had to get out and unload what we wanted then he drove the car off. Another chap appeared with a trolley for our luggage – by this time we were just laughing, the trolley was like something from ‘The Suite Life of Zack and Cody’ on TV with brass handles, him in full rig uniform

and us with a small squashy overnight bag and four small toiletry bags between us.We said we thought we could manage our meagre possessions and he disappeared without a tip. Joe couldn’t resist having a ride when no-one was looking!

But Lyon was a fun city, we could have done with more than one night there.  Walking around we came across cyclists doing the  most amazing stunts in two bowls painted  with angry birds, and a huge tree made  entirely of flowers; at the side of the tree was a fountain, or rather, multiple fountains around which, two children were playing, totally absorbed in trying to work out when  the next jet of water would blast out and  would they have time to jump back.