Abidjan, Ivory Coast to Lyon, France from $438

🌍 About Lyon, France

Lyon is France's food capital — Paul Bocuse's home turf — but the thing to actually eat is a quenelle de brochet: a poached pike dumpling that puffs up under a creamy crayfish sauce nantua. Eat it in a bouchon, the certified old-school bistros (look for the official plaque, not the tourist imitations). The real sight is the traboules: roughly 230 covered passageways cut through the buildings of Vieux Lyon and the Croix-Rousse, built so 19th-century silk weavers could move bolts of cloth in the dry. Croix-Rousse, the old weavers' hill, is where the genuine ones still let you walk straight down the slope through courtyards. Come May–June or September for warm, dry weather. Or come for the Fête des Lumières in early December, when the whole city is lit for four nights.