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The Lyon pub crawl challlenge

30/03/2026

It was recently St. Patricks day here in Lyon as it was in Dublin, New York, London and all over the world recently. Naturally my first thought was to go out for a healthy amount of drinks after work. Not enjoying a bank holiday here, I could only start after 6pm. And what better way to celebrate St. Patricks day here than a classic pub crawl. There are a surprising amount of Irish pubs in Lyon. I have marked pubs that I would consider as Irish or Irish aligned pubs in the map seen below.

Most Irish pubs in Lyon are in Vieux Lyon.

I believe that this list will be more faithful than anything you shall find in the petit paumé 🔗. It should also be mentioned that just serving Guiness is not enough to qualify a venue as an Irish pub, as to do so would be to include half of the bars in this city. For those that are not Irish, the difference between an English style pub and Irish style pub may not be clear. There are subtle but definite differences. What's The Difference Between English Pubs And Irish Pubs? 🔗 is not a bad article on the subject. It should be noted that I have not yet visited all of the mentioned pubs. For now, pictures I checked online serve as my proof of their relative Irishness. With that in mind, I thought a more fun way of doing future pub crawls would be to make a tier list of various difficulties in performing your pub crawl. These would be as follows (in order of difficulty ascending) :

1 . Tourist pub crawl
2 . French pub crawl
3 . Irish pub crawl
4 . Festy O’Semtex / Paddy Losty pub crawl

1 . Tourist pub crawl – This is the easiest pub crawl, and even those that don’t consider themselves as heavy drinkers should be able to manage it. Simply put; all of the Irish pubs in Vieux Lyon. This is still most of them admittedly, but this is a small area to cover relatively speaking, but very doable on foot. 7 pubs in total.

Vieux Lyon is one of the most touristic parts of the city. The James Beer House seen here is one of the Irish pubs in this area.

The easiest way of doing this is in a north -> south or south -> north direction. I have drawn the optimal routes here, though it should be noted that the crowds can be very busy on the ‘rue Saint-Jean’ at the best of times (and St. Patricks day is worse in my experience) so it can sometimes be faster to bypass certain streets by taking the ‘quai Romain Roland’ :

Lyon can be busy during celebrations like St. Patricks day, but nothing compared to Temple Bar in Dublin.

2 . French pub crawl – The French, as Europeans are inherently drinkers. It is not unusual to have a glass of wine every day for dinner here. However, meaning no disrespect; they are not Irish. The Irish are a different breed, especially in this authors humble opinion, especially on St. Patricks day. As such, I do have to put the French pub crawl on a tier below. This crawl is still a serious endeavour. Almost all of the pubs in the list with a few forfeits added in. We will allow any means of transport to achieve this pub crawl. This is an important distinction as ‘Paddy’s Corner’ in La Croix Rousse rises ~80 metres from the city centre and is steep to climb by foot.

You will be rewarded with a beer at the Paddy's Corner if you succeed in mounting la colline de la Croix-Rousse.

This challenge will comprise only 2 further pubs, so 9 in total. No small feat of course. My optimal route finishes in ‘Paddy’s Corner’ which has later opening hours than many locations, but I will consider the pub crawl achieved as long as these 9 pubs are visited by any means. Note that the following map and further maps do not list all of the pubs in a node (A, B, C, etc.), as Google Maps only allows a certain amount of nodes per route. I have simply drawn a line of the route for the following routes :

3 . Irish pub crawl – Serious stuff now. The Irish pub crawl includes all 12 bars I have identified so get a good meal in before starting this pub crawl. Stopping for some frites in Vieux Lyon wouldn’t be a bad idea also considering how much drink will be consumed. Just like the French pub crawl, the means by which you find yourself at each pub is not important here. I have drawn a route that would be easiest in terms of public transport without much cost (1 fare per hour in the Lyon public transport). Naturally, starting off in the distant ‘Bryan's Café’ makes sense. Hopping onto the nearby metro at ‘Charpennes’ will bring you into the city centre by the 'Wallace Snug’ via the 'Cordeliers' metro where a loop of pubs can be done before taking the metro up the hill to ‘Paddy’s Corner’.

Taking the metro around Lyon will help a lot for this particular pub crawl.

At this point, the only pub that remains is the ‘Wallace Pub’ in Vaise. The fastest way here (and the route I draw below) would probably be taking a ‘velov’ (Lyon city bike) down the hill via the montée des Esses. Admittedly, this may not be the most responsible thing to do after (at least) 11 beers, however this is not a challenge for responsible people. An alternative is simply to walk down the hill. TCL bus 2 will also bring you here for your final and somewhat appropriate 12th pint.

4 . Festy O’Semtex / Paddy Losty pub crawl – I was wondering whilst mulling the idea of this pub crawl about these challenges and how I could make it even harder than visiting all pubs. I concluded that doing the entire challenge by foot would increase the challenge by a good measure. Absolutely no bus / metro / bike allowed for this crawl. Walking or running only, and you may indeed be crawling by the end of it, but it wouldn’t be a challenge if we made it easy. To give some context on the characters mentioned in the title, Festy O’Semtex is a character in the Irish magazine ‘The Phoenix’, who seemingly spends half of his life in the pub. Take a glance at their archive of comic strips if you don’t believe me : FESTY O'SEMTEX - The Phoenix Magazine 🔗. Paddy Losty is a famous Dublin pub man of a bygone era. Little is known about him beyond the fact that he liked a drink. According to the recording documenting his pub going antics, he would either drink 45 pints a night OR 4 to 5. It is not exactly clear what he says, though I like to think that no self-respecting pub man would boast about drinking 4-5 pints :

The characters above would likely be found in this place. 'O'Donoghues' in Dublin.

A bonus point should you have the packet of crisps and peanuts (and nothing else) during this pub crawl, as Paddy would do. Neither of these characters would have any trouble with this final challenge, so neither should (some of) you. I have also proposed a route with the hill climb as the final step. It wasn’t supposed to be easy after all. With all of the walking involved, you will want to be starting early enough. This may involve taking time off from work should it be a weekday. Should you achieve this pub crawl, you have my admiration. You are a serious pub crawler in my eyes. I shall certainly be attempting this next year myself.

Sláinte!

My last pubcrawl in Lyon.

Image sources:
File:Lyon Rooftops (166515623).jpeg - Wikimedia Commons
File:Vieux Lyon (32206310233).jpg - Wikimedia Commons
File:The Temple Bar, Dublin, Ireland.jpeg - Wikimedia Commons
File:Place des Tapis (Lyon) en mai 2022.JPG - Wikimedia Commons
File:Rame Métro D Station Métro Vieux Lyon Lyon 1.jpg - Wikimedia Commons
File:ODonoghue pub Dublin Ireland.jpg - Wikimedia Commons