Long Walk, Short Story... and lots of red tape

Today Betty and I will travel from Paris to Lyon, which involves several hours of train and walking.  While I have walked these routes before several times, I want to give Betty some props for lugging her luggage 5.5km in the hot sun, then still being willing to go out and explore another couple kilometers in the evening.

After our usual late morning croissant at Café République, Betty and I repeat yesterday's 2.5km walk from our hotel in Place Voltaire down to Gare de Lyon, and board the TGV to Lyon.  We leave earlier than we need to for our 1pm train, because we want to make sure we have the time to walk slowly and take the shady canal route to the station.

At the Bastille, I am accosted by a man in a short boxed beard, who tries to look up my skirt. Naturally, I respond as any French woman would: I tell him off, feel super empowered, then put his name on my list of potential lovers.  ;)   Ok, I am being facetious.  I know that many French women are just as uncomfortable with sexual harassment as I am, and that this is not actually a man.

Arriving at the station, we have time to eat a small snack at the Café Sur l'Herbe in front of the gare, which is set up to resemble a little garden.  I introduce Betty to the Panaché, which is second only to the Monaco in popularity, as a light summer cocktail in France.  

After our nosh, we go inside the train station and check the board to see which Voie (platform) our train will arrive on.  Strangely enough, our train number doesn't seem to match the number on the board, even though all the other details are the same.  Concerned, we ask at the Acceuil (Info) desk. The lady there assures us that it is the same train. It takes us arriving at the train itself to see why the train has two different numbers:  it really is two different trains attached together, nose to nose!

Betty has sprung for First Class tickets, and we order the fanciest lunch I have ever had on a train.  There is a grilled salmon sitting on a bed of braised artichoke and fennel, a lightly poached egg nestled on a bed of mixed shredded cabbage and topped with crème de raifort, a lovely chocolate mousse topped with almond crumble... and of course, a bottle of red wine.   Each part of the meal includes the name of the chef that made it. Seriously.

Two hours later, we arrive in Lyon.  Stepping outside the station, it feels like the temperature has risen significantly, as compared to Paris.  My weather app says it's only 26 degrees Celsius, but it feels much hotter.  We walk a 3km direct route along Cours Lafayette from the Gare Lyon Part Dieu, across the Rhone River, Presqu'ile, and Saone River, and then into Vieux Lyon, where the Propriétaire of our gites has sent his son Tom to get us settled in (more on that in the next blog).

When we arrive at Betty's gite, hot and sweaty, we must weave around the caution tape at the top of the stairs to Betty's courtyard, which seems to be guarding a small pile of gravel.  "That's been there for a while," says Tom. "The city is doing some work here."

After dropping our luggage into the gites, we stop in to Chope de Lug, a fancy microbeer beer store right across the street from Betty's gite, and buy some fancy beers for later tonight. We put them in the fridge, then crash out in our gites for a few hours.

After our rest, we realize the fridge setting is not cold enough to cool the beers in time for tonight, so we go to Sol Café, about 20 feet from the door of her gite down Rue du Boeuf, and have a beer while enjoying the evening air.  (I'm not sure whether to call where we were sitting a patio, or a sidewalk café, or something else, because really, it's just some bistro tables set up on the road itself.)

Refreshed, we decide to stroll around Vieux Lyon, to give Betty a flavour of the neighborhood, but it is so hot, even in the evening, that we can't even think about getting supper, and opt instead for ice cream cones.  We go to Amorino Gelato, where you get an unlimited choice of flavors (seriously) and they make your cone into the shape of a flower (seriously).  The more flavors you choose, the more multicolored your flower, since they put it together petal by petal.  Betty opts for stracciatella, speculoos, and pistachio, while I get chocolate, basil, and agrumes (citrus fruit).  The basil is so amazing, I vow to get the next one 100% basil.

Of course, after "dinner" we must have "dessert," so we also get crepes from the street vendor outside of Le Petit Glouton.  As this is Betty's first street crepe in France, the filling flavour is an important decision.  Betty ponders the possible flavor choices while the crepe lady waits patiently:  "Orange or apricot... Orange or apricot... Hmmm...."  I order my chocolate crepe.  Finally, Betty decides: "Strawberry!"  which sets the crepe lady into a peal of laughter: "Pas mal!" she retorts.

I drop Betty off at her gite, and walk down Rue de Boeuf one block to my gite, making a quick stop at the Casino corner market just as they are closing.  The store owner is pushing his outdoor display racks into the store aisles, and so I stretch myself over them, leaning precariously, to grab the only bottle of red wine I can reach, and hope for the best.  Settled in to my gite with some wine and cheese, I blog into the wee hours.  The air is cool and the evening quiet.

Around midnight, I hear a massive crashing and smashing outside my window.  I lean out the window into the courtyard, which is nearly empty, except for one couple sitting at a bistro table.  They get up and slowly meander over to the base of the big tree next to the Mairie... where one of its branches has mysteriously broken and is now covering a half-dozen bicycles.  Based on their reaction, I can tell there is no-one hurt by the incident, and they seem just as confused as me as to why the huge branch would have suddenly fallen for seemingly no reason.

The next morning as I head out, I notice how the issue has been "addressed"... a caution ribbon has been put around the entire area, including the bikes.  Problem solved.