Europe 2003 - Part 12: Lyon, France

I think I was born to ride the railroad earth.

Usually I don’t mention my transportation details but this time it’s worth it. I spent the whole night on the train with a little kid jumping everywhere like a monkey and his fully moustached French daddy was jumping all over with him. So our cabin of 6 lost our minds but found our soul, as the kid just refused to settle. And I woke up at just after 5 a.m. when the ticket lady murmured something in formal German DIRECT into my ear - to change at Karlsruhe. So I spent the day getting to Lyon and the scenery panorama from my window was maginifico. Back to the point - I wrote this transportation passage simply to mention the shower. I wanted to have a shower, so when I reached Lyon Part Dieu, my shower cost me - 6 euros. I find my daily shower SOMEWHERE, but this time there was no option but to pay their sodding dues. And a darn good “shower” it was too - I spent ages having an excellent shave, had the longest poo in living memory and a monumentally long shower - so I made my money’s worth! At the beginning, I almost charmed the lady at reception to accepting 3 euros, she was lovely, but her boss walks in like a frowning Trevor McDonald and they both laugh while I continue moaning about the inflated price of 6 euros. Darn, for that much, I would expect her to come in and scrub me personally!

The surrounds of Lyon Perrache are not that nice, the surroundings are overgrown with a lot of dodgy teenagers, mostly of North African origin. I say they are dodgy because asking directions to a different bunch on 4 different occassions - ended up in a blabberation of useless junk, talking without flair or flavour. Probably city centre victims like in other major cities? The whole afternoon was spent in a cafe and in the parks, dozing away and reading. I met Mark and Kunal in the evening and a great, memorable job began.