After the Brooks Marathon du Lac d'Annecy: Lyon
The Route: Annecy → Lyon Part-Dieu (2 nights) → Lyon-Saint Exupéry Airport Logistics: Direct TER, no change required; Rhônexpress tram connects Part-Dieu directly to the airport. Marathon Month: April Duration: 2 nights
Annecy ──(TER, fastest ~1h52, typical ~2h02)──> Lyon Part-Dieu (2 nights)
│
Lyon-Saint Exupéry (LYS) ◄──(Rhônexpress, <30 mins, every 15 mins)──┘
The Brooks Marathon du Lac d'Annecy finishes beside a lake in a town built around scenery. Lyon, reached by direct train in as little as 1h52, offers the opposite kind of city break: France's food capital, with two rivers, a real old town and a museum scene big enough to fill two full days without repeating anything. It runs on its own rhythm year-round, so there is no seasonal window to plan around the way there is with Chamonix's lift schedule or Aix-les-Bains' thermal calendar.
April in Lyon sits in a mild, changeable stretch between winter and proper spring warmth, good walking weather more often than not, with the city's markets, bouchons and museums all running their normal year-round schedule rather than a summer or festival one.
Nights One and Two: Lyon
Lyon's Presqu'île sits between the Rhône and the Saône, and the Berges du Rhône, the city's riverside promenade along the Rhône's left bank, is the primary recovery asset for this stay: a long, flat, paved walkway running for several kilometres beside the water, with benches, floating gardens and river-level cafés rather than steps or steep embankments. It is comfortable walking on tired legs and gives a sense of the city's scale without climbing anything.
Vieux Lyon, the Renaissance old town on the Saône's opposite bank, is flatter underfoot than its hillside setting suggests, since the traboules, the covered passageways that cut between buildings and streets, run mostly level even where the streets around them climb. Fourvière hill, above the old town, holds the basilica and a view over the whole city, and is reachable by funicular rather than a walked climb, worth choosing over the steps on legs that ran a marathon two days before. The Musée des Beaux-Arts, in a former abbey on Place des Terreaux, is a full afternoon of indoor, low-effort sightseeing if the weather turns.
Les Halles de Lyon Paul Bocuse, a covered food market at 102 cours Lafayette, is worth building an entire meal around rather than treating as a browsing stop: dozens of stalls selling cheese, charcuterie, seafood and pastry, most with a small counter to eat standing or seated right there. It solves the specific problem of a rainy April afternoon and a runner who doesn't want a formal restaurant booking for every meal, and it sits close enough to Part-Dieu that no separate transport is needed to reach it.
Where to stay: ibis Lyon Part-Dieu Les Halles and Mercure Lyon Centre - Gare Part Dieu both sit close to Part-Dieu station, where the train from Annecy arrives and where the Rhônexpress departs for the airport, keeping both ends of the trip simple.
Where to eat: L'Auberge des Canuts, a traditional bouchon lyonnais, serves the city's traditional register: quenelle, andouillette and other Lyonnais specialities built for a real appetite rather than a delicate one. It suits the second evening of this stay better than the first, once the legs and the stomach have both had a proper day to recover.
Getting to Lyon-Saint Exupéry Airport (LYS)
The Rhônexpress tram runs directly from Lyon Part-Dieu to Lyon-Saint Exupéry Airport in under 30 minutes, departing roughly every 15 minutes through the day from around 4:25am until midnight. Because the service is this frequent, there is little need to plan a specific departure time in advance, only to allow the usual airport buffer once you arrive. Check current fares and the exact first and last departures before an early or late flight, since these can shift between timetable updates.