Share your Lyon tips with GuardianWitness or #GuardianLyon

The bank of the Rhône, Lyon, France Photograph: Alamy

This week Guardian Travel is producing an alternative guide to the French city of Lyon, and we need your help to do it.

We would like you to tell us about the best bars and cafes, the most interesting things to do and the insider tips you’ve picked up by travelling or even living and working in the city. Maybe you know someone who is there right now? If so, we’d love to hear from them.

You can share your tips and photographs with us using GuardianWitness by clicking on the blue “Contribute” buttons. We’ll also be looking for Twitter replies and the most interesting Instagram pictures you’ve taken or found – with the hashtag #GuardianLyon. The best will be published next week.

Is it Lyon’s breed of antique markets that turns you on to the city? You might just know a little bit about its culinary secrets and reckon we might be missing out. Whichever it is, let us know by midday on Friday 21 August – and don’t forget the hashtag.

What is the best way to travel in Europe this summer?

European seaside destinations will soon be accessible by high-speed rail. Photograph: Trevor Ray Hart

Q. We are planning to go to Italy with our parents and children (aged eight and 10) this summer. What’s the best way to get there?

A. When kids are very young and patience is not their strongest virtue, getting to a holiday destination as quickly as humanly possible usually seems like the best option.

Once your offspring are over about six, however, a whole new world of travel possibilities opens up to you. Car, train and ferry journeys can be the stuff childhood memories are made of, and give families plenty of flexibility for stopping off at interesting places en route.

Time is the big factor of course, and if you only have a week’s break then flying is always going to seem like a better choice.

If you do have enough time though, ferry or train make an exciting change from air travel – and its corresponding hassle. Ferry (ferrycheap.com) is still the better way to go if you’re taking your car – taking a car by train to Europe is still possible by motorail, but complicated and relatively expensive.

But if you are car-free, then travelling by rail is a great way to start your holiday. It only takes a day to go from London to Milan by Eurostar and TGV and costs from £61 one way – but book as early as possible to get the cheapest fares.

For multi-generational groups such as yours, going by train is likely to work especially well. Children can roam when they get restless, and the group can swap seats to keep things interesting and share entertainment duties.

If you want to stop at multiple places on the way, consider an Interrail pass (interrail.eu) – children under 11 travel for free.*

*Always consult a financial adviser before taking advice. Opinions expressed here do not necessarily reflect the views of Sainsbury’s Bank.

Sainsbury’s Bank provides a range of services, including banking products, car insurance, home insurance, life insurance, pet insurance, travel insurance, travel money and savings.

We combine the shopping experience and banking by offering customers great products at fair prices, while consistently rewarding them with extra Nectar card points for choosing Sainsbury’s for their finance and shopping needs. Nectar points can be used towards travel, treats, family days out and shopping.

Visit Holland’s most charming and underrated city, take a break on the Cornish coast or explore Spain’s Picos de Europa

Take me there: Utrecht

Why go?

On 4 July the eyes of the world will focus on the Dutch city of Utrecht as it hosts the Grand Départ of the Tour de France. For a cycle-mad nation this is cause for celebration, but it’s also a chance to show off one of their most charming and underrated cities. With its handsome medieval centre, gabled merchants’ houses, café-lined canals and cosmopolitan student population, Utrecht offers a laid-back and compact alternative to Amsterdam.

What to do

This is Holland, so a cycle tour is virtually obligatory. There are dozens of rental places in town, but if you’ve been inspired by the Tour de France you can cycle the first or second stages on a vintage racer with Vintage Bike Tours (vintagebiketours.nl). They also offer gentle city tours on classic Dutch bikes. Alternatively, get a duck’s-eye view of the city by renting a kayak (kanoverhuurutrecht.nl). Utrecht’s canals are surprisingly peaceful and the chances of getting mown down by a motor-cruiser are pleasantly slim. Design aficionados should check out the Rietveld Schröder House, the modernist house built by Gerrit Rietveld, a luminary of the De Stijl movement in the 1920s. The excellent Centraal Museum has his furniture on display and can organise guided tours of the house (centraalmuseum.nl).

Where to eat

Blauw is the best place in Utrecht for Indonesian food. Order the “rijsttafel” (literally, rice table) for a tasting menu of a dozen or so small dishes for €30 per head (restaurantblauw.nl).

Where to stay

All rooms in the 18th century canal-side house The Mary K were designed by local artists and the welcome is warm (from €120, marykhotel.com).

Insider tip

The Dutch love a coffee-shop and Hayo van Dijk of Vintage Bike Tours says his favourite is Blackbird Coffee & Vintage (Oudegracht 222 , blackbirdcoffee.nl): “The couple who run the place are lovely, the coffee is great and their [juice] bar is awesome. Alongside the coffee they also sell vintage bikes. It’s a nice, tranquil place which you could easily pass, but should definitely visit.”

Give me a break

Summer’s hottest address: Chapel House, Penzance.

Home A quirky bolthole on the Cornish coast Cornwall has no shortage of gorgeous boltholes, but there’s always room for one more. Chapel House has just opened in Penzance in the building that used to house the quirky Penzance Arts Club. There are six airy rooms with sea views. With the option of kitchen suppers on weekend evenings and foraging excursions it looks set to become summer’s hottest address. B&B from £150 (chapelhousepz.co.uk).

On a high: cycling in Spain’s Picos de Europa National Park.

Away Active holidays in Spain Pura Aventura is inviting adventurous families to Spain’s Picos de Europa National Park this summer to enjoy a week’s activity holiday, with canoeing, canyoning, swimming, hiking and cycling. Combining guided excursions with independent activities, the trip departs on 23 July. From £750pp, including a week’s B&B in small, family-run hotels, car hire and guided trips. Flights extra (pura-aventura.com).

An insider's cultural guide to Nottingham: Cinematic, collaborative and creative

The pre-recorded voice of the Nottingham tram informs passengers of approaching stops in an authentic Notts accent. The invisible tour guide was chosen in a competition to decide who should be the voice of the tram.
Everyone’s tuning into …
With their continuous jamz, KEMET.FM is Nottingham’s first official urban music radio station. So if they’re not tuned in already, they should be now.
Best current venue?
Cramped, sweaty and showcasing the roughest shared toilet in the world, JT Soar is an old potato warehouse that has been converted into a music and arts venue. Some of the best nights are promoted by the folks from The Music Exchange, the finest independent record store in the city. The venue is also home to a brilliant recording studio, currently building sleeping bunks for bands!
Who’s top of the playlist?
Music video for Tied up in Nottz by Sleaford Mods.
Loud, raucous, poetic and blunt Sleaford Mods are a definable sound of Nottingham. Vocalist Jason Williamson moved to the city in 1996 and warmed to it straight away. “It was the close proximity of things that I found endearing,” says Williamson, “I’m a small towner so I connected to that aspect of Nottingham straight away.”
The city is rooted in their post-punk, kitchen sink sound too. Williamson remarks that in Nottingham, “ruined reminders of the Old Empire’s megalomania stand everywhere, in old bridges and homes through to the hard faced terrace houses that litter the city.”
Elsewhere Scor-zay-zee has just released his latest album to critical acclaim – after 20 years of hard work as a rapper and actor (Shane Meadows used him in Le Donk & Scor-zay-zee in 2009 and he continues to appear in shorts and features, including the brilliant Gary The Rapper, by Mark Devenport).
It’s worth noting too that there would be no Scorz without places like Nottingham’s Community Recording Studio (CRS) in St Ann’s, which has been going for over 20 years. Run by Trevor Rose and Nick Stez, CRS has nurtured singers, rappers, dancers and producers and notable luminaries include Nina Smith, Mistajam, Harliegh Blu, Out Da Vile, Ms Tempz, Illmanna, Kick Spencer and Scorz, of course.
Dominic West visits the CRS to promote the film Guillemot, which was shot by and stars young people from an estate in St Ann’s, Nottingham.
Best local artist?
Nottingham has a great literary heritage to pick from (from Byron and DH Lawrence to Alan Sillitoe), but great, popular authors still live and work here …
Niki Valentine writes blood chilling psychological horror like the novel Haunted, which takes a lovely married couple out to the Scottish wilds and shakes things up nastily. Or Alison Moore, a member of the Nottingham Writers’ Studio, who was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize for her unsettling novel The Lighthouse.
The best cultural Instagram?
Rather than a single Instagram account, you should follow the #nottinghamrocks hashtag which is probably the best celebration of the city’s cultural diversity.
But to find out what is happening, where, when and why … then Left Lion has all the culture fit to print, monthly.

What’s the big talking point?
The tram! When will it end? They’ve been building new tracks for years and we still don’t know when they’re actually going to open. It’s a shambles.
What Nottingham does better than anyone …
Nottingham has become a city of film. Thanks to left-field outfits like Kino Klubb, Strange Things Are Happening and Kneel BeforeZod, it’s possible that you might stumble into a pub and find a screening of a Radley Metzger art-house porno movie, or indulge in VHS nostalgia with an open air screening of Breakin’ 2: Electric Boogaloo.
There’s Shane Meadows of course, but Jeanie Finlay is making waves with feature docs and Steven Sheil directs international horror films out of a small office in the Broadway Cinema. Wellington Films (behind films including London To Brighton and the Duane Hopkins breakthrough, Better Things) are based there, too.
Just down from the Broadway is the legendary Television Workshop where some of the finest modern actors have emerged: Vicky McClure, Joe Dempsie, Samantha Morton, Jack O’Connell, Toby Kebbell and many more. There’s a longer list than we have space for …
Moment in history?

Nottingham is a city filled with great art, fantastic writers and amazing film, so of course it’s football! Nottingham Forest (technically the wrong side of the river) has provided the city with not one, but two of the most important cultural contributions to its identity: both of them are Forest winning the European Cup – in 1979 and 1980. Nottingham is also host to Notts County, the oldest professional club in the world, and inspiration for Italian giants Juventus’ famous zebra stripes.

Graffitti artists Dilk (from England) and Sunk (from Holland) painted this graffiti mural on a car repair garage in the St Ann’s area of the city.

Chris Cooke teaches and presents film and sometimes (once) made things. Melissa Gueneau talks about films in a dodgy accent for a living and spends too much time on Twitter.