Lyon

After Palermo I was looking forward to getting to France to check out a new culture, and see if I could use my French that I learned in uni to good use. The resounding answer to that was that it didn;t help much, and whenever I did speak French I gave them a good laugh. But overall I have found the French to be great people, and really hospitable which has been a good surprise.

After we arrived in Lyon we had to navigate the trains and the subway from the airport to Lachies house which was easy enough. Well it was until we were about to leave the subway station and I wasn’t paying enough attention and put my subway ticket in the wrong slot (note for next time: don’t place it in the hole with the cross above it, aim for the one with a tick…) and thought I was trapped on the other side of the barriers. So while I was trying to explain to Louise and get her to buy me a new ticket for me, a couple of French ladies stopped to try and help us, but realized we only spoke 'Anglais'. There was lots of talk and hand signals going on, before finally they were able to get the doors to open and let me out of the subway, only for me to realize the next day that the gates were actually automatic and I could’ve strolled throughno worries without my ticket, and the slot was just a rubbish slot for the tickets!

We arrived at Lachies and it was great to see him. Such a good guy, and thankfully let us overstay our time for a few days before we headed to Paris. He had a great little apartment not far from the city so we could get out and explore on our own if need be as well. Since he was off from training for another couple of days he took us around the city and to a viewpoint looking over the city near a large church. The city is a UNESCO world heritage city because of its beautiful architecture and interesting history. After that we headed to the lake for a swim which was another French experience of speedo wearing men smoking ciggies and topless sunbathing – quite French!

The next day was a big day where we headed to Grenoble to check out the Tour de France! But I will leave that for a separate post as it deserves a full blog post all to itself…

The rest of our time was spent exploring the city and its cuisine (one of the great benefits of travelling with Louise). The city was really easy to get around and had a great bike sharing system which cost about 1Euro to hire a bike for an hour, so we went on a few bike rides and one day headed alongside the river (the city borders two large beautiful rivers which are frequented regularly by river cruises) to the cities largest park. The park was awesome as it had a free zoo that you could bike through! It was cool to be able to cruise along and check out the monkeys, lions and giraffes on our bikes. Like in Palermo we also went on a walking tour of the city which again was really interesting, but we spent most of our time cowering from the rain.

We also often went to the markets and bought local produce and also to the local patisseries (which we find hard to not stop at as we walk past). We enjoyed having a base for a few days where we (*coughLouisecough*) could get in the kitchen to put together a few home cooked meals which was more often than not accompanied by some extravagant patisseries. But to finish up our time in Lyon we went out to dinner to sample the local cuisineand also as a way to say thanks to Lachie. It was a 3 course meal consisting of all sorts – fish, sausages, veges, bread, cheese, and of course a massive desert. Its hard for me to explain the food as half the time im not sure what they have done or what goes into it, but most of the time its bloody good. 

The next morning we headed off toward Lyon via train. At the train station I got chatting with a nice Aussie guy at the station who was travelling with his young family for 5 weeks through Europe. After talking for awhile about sport I mentioned about heading to the Commonwealth games to watch the athletics as I used to run 1500m, to which he asked if I knew of a Bruce Jones, who was his uncle. I said I was good mates with Nick and knew Bruce well too…small world.