Lyon, France—Day 225

Today I got up with the full intention of returning my rental car and going back up to Paris to get in the zoo at Thoiry for a second time. Unfortunately the rental agreement only allowed me 750 miles for three days and I had already driven that much. So I got up and worked on my photos before heading down to the train station. Two funny things about this hotel: in the lobby, the woman that has been working at the desk always brings her little dog in to work with her. The dog spends most of the day lounging in one area of the lobby to the next, always in a different place when I come down. When I came down this time, the dog was under this small table and the woman was drawing the curtains for the dog, so that the sun didn’t shine directly on it. I came down just as she was doing this (the dog is so small it looked like she wasn’t really talking to anything if you couldn’t see it) and she was sort of embarrassed that I caught her talking to her dog.

The other funny thing is that the door to the hotel is one of these automatic doors. I didn’t really know that you were supposed to press a button for it to open or close, so I have been walking up to it this whole time trying to get out and sometimes it opened and some times it wouldn’t. Other people would come and go and each time it would just open for them but for me it was like this struggle to stand in the right place (perhaps the sensor wasn’t working right) and part luck on my part to get it open. That is until a guy pointed out to me that there was a button to push.

Ohhh.

I went to return my car (a day early) I found the office to be closed on Sunday! Plus the offices for the rental agencies in Versailles were also closed.

Argh.

So it seemed like I just had to spend the day in Lyon. I ended up getting some lunch, going to the nice museum in town, finishing up my book, walking up to the Basilica and the overlooking view onto Lyon which was quite nice and meeting these two French ladies (one of whom lives in England near my grandparents) who were quite funny. They asked me if I had seen the pottery fair going on and I had no idea what they were talking about. Turned out that there were like 150 pottery stalls and a fair going on in the town and I didn’t even know it! So after the basilica I went down and wandered amongst the fair. I then went and saw a movie and had dinner at a Creperie before going back to the hotel.


(c) 2004 Sarah Galbraith. All Rights Reserved.