lyon – Laura's Site Thing

Le Mur de Lyon
Address: 11 Rue Lortet, 69007 Lyon, France
Hours: 8am – 12am everyday
Rating: 5.0/5.0

This is possibly my favorite bouldering gym. Their facilities are top notch, and it has a lot of bouldering space. They even have a cafe attached in case you’re hungry and outdoor seating for those nice Lyon days/nights. Turns out Lyon is really warm into much of October at least.

Pricing: Happy Hour pricing 10-pass for 95€, regular single entry pass 15€, Regular 10-pass 130€, Shoes are 4€

The pricing here is really reasonable especially if you’re able to go during happy hours, which is what I ended up doing. The 10-pass can be used by multiple people. They also have an annual pricing as well as per 4 months, which didn’t make sense for the amount of time we were staying.

One of my favorite things about this gym is that they have an entire section almost as big as the problems area for traverses. They also have traverses that scale from beginner to expert which was a pleasant surprise. I ended up spending the entire last week in Lyon on just traverses because they were so much fun. I also wanted to build up more stamina and well, traverses are good for that. The labeling for the different grades are very clearly labeled. None of the traverses changed during the 3 weeks we were there.

Problems and other exercise area — Problems section with a peek at the weights/treadmills area above

They don’t use the V scale here; instead they use colors in the problems area and a colors + numbers grading for the traverse section. The really nice thing about the problems area is that there are a bunch of routes for each level although the walls aren’t so crowded with problems that it’s hard to tell where your holds are. It also really helps that the holds for each problem are all the same color as the level they are meant to be for. I really enjoyed how easy it was to tell where my next moves were even if I often couldn’t actually get to them.

The picture doesn’t really do the problems area justice as it is pretty big. The height of the walls is maybe a bit higher than I’m comfortable with, which is another reason why I like traverses – they tend to have lower walls. About 1/5 of the problems were switched out one time while we were there. The mats kind of have a more solid thunk when you hit them than you initially expect.

You can only see a little bit of the weight lifting/cardio area as I didn’t take a specific picture of it. It’s not big as is the case in most rock climbing areas, but it seemed fairly comprehensive. I don’t do weight training on top of the climbing although I will sometimes spend a bit of time running so having the treadmills was really nice.

There’s also an area to train on a bunch of more rock climbing specific holds/ladders/ etc which I also didn’t take a picture of. I know! I was lazy T_T. I kept forgetting to take pictures. That section was also much better equipped than the other rock climbing gyms that I’d been to so far. I enjoyed doing some core exercises in that area.

Of course, they also had a massive amount of the regular rope climbing walls. Harnesses are also 4€ to rent. I have no idea how nice the setup is, but maybe the picture is helpful.

In addition, they had a bunch of sections for children to climb in, which seemed pretty kid friendly although I didn’t actually see many kids maybe since one of the main areas for children was up a staircase away from the bouldering areas.

All in all, this is just a great bouldering gym. I really hope we spend more time in Lyon another time so that we can go back here.

back area — View of the back/outside area of Les Cafetiers

Les Cafetiers
Address: 36 Rue Ferrandière, 69002 Lyon, France
Hours: M/W/Th/F: 9am-7pm, Sa: 10am-6pm, Su: 10am-5pm
Rating: 4.5/5.0

While we were in Lyon, Les Cafetiers quickly became our favorite place to work at outside of the apartment we were staying at. It was started by a couple of British guys (one of the owners is apparently a pilot for British Airways), and the staff seem to all be native English speakers, which was really convenient for us.

The most important part of being able to work out of a cafe is of course the quality of its wi-fi, which in this case, was really good. The speed didn’t fluctuate. There were no random disconnections, and the information to connect was printed on the menu on each table.

There were an abundance of tables to work at, and after the lunch hour, the cafe was pretty quiet and uncrowded which made for a really comfortable environment to work in. As for outlets, there were 5/6 of them spread throughout the cafe, and all the indoor seating was within distance of at least 1 outlet. The outside seats didn’t have any outlets that I could see. Sometimes people would smoke at the outdoor seats and the smoke would waft in.

drink menu — The drinks menu at Les Cafetiers

They serve all your expected coffee types (I assume anyway since I’m not actually a regular coffee drinker), but they’ve also got a nice selection of teas. I ordered the hot chocolate every time and was pleasantly surprised to learn that they could replace the milk with oat milk since I’m lactose intolerant. Turns out oat milk is pretty tasty. I enjoyed oat milk much more than conventional soy/almond milk replacements that are usually offered (although I think this has more to do with the quality of the soy/almond milk options out there rather than soy/almond milk themselves.

hot chocolate — Hot chocolate with oat milk

In addition to drinks, they had a selection of pastries. You can also order salads although we always ate lunch before coming here to work so we never did. We had the carrot cake and the cheesecake (eaten too quickly to be pictured) which were both fantastic.

There is only one bathroom so it’s non-gendered, and it’s kept fairly clean. It’s on the same level as the rest of the shop without a step to access although because that area is a little narrow, it might not be entirely accessible.

Do be aware that they are super busy up until about the end of the lunch period. It’s not a good place to work until about 1:30pm. They are probably also fine in the morning before lunch, but we’re not up that early ever.