Day 18 – Thursday December 23rd 2010 (Lyon, France)

We got into Lyon at about 11am and Although we were sleepy that just made us more motivated to find a Hostel. We found one that was fairly close by metro and then trolley and we went there with great haste. Our friend at the desk was full of drunken glee and we were instant chums. He told us that Lyon was the Gastronomy capitol of France, meaning they have amazing food just up the road and I was excited to explore then eat. We dropped our bags in the Hostel and locked stuff up and then ran off to the roman ruins we had heard so much about. It was raining but the ruins were really close and I winked at a cute French girl with a purple umbrella. I’ve decided that I want to include winking in my facial expression lexicon, its just always seemed so charming and confident when people wink at me. It’s kinda hard though, to make such a drastic change overnight. I still make mistakes, such as when I accidently winked at that legless homeless man. Inappropriate… But I’m learning and I think purple umbrella girl smiled. Anyway, we walked through the ruins in the rain. It was very romantic. Then we found that there was a museum right next door and it was free today! My favorite word! So we walked through that and got exhausted. The romans sure built a lot of stairs. After the ruins and the museum we went to this famous massive cathedral and I tried hard to find catacombs but there were none. Maybe in Rome… As we were walking through the city and it was getting dark Lijah and I looked into each other’s eyes and saw deep-rooted exhaustion and so we headed back to the Hostel. Lijah passed out almost immediately on the bed and I uploaded and edited some pictures in the foyer. I met a nice French girl named Claire and we talked for a long time about life in France and her theater school and about what French people think of Americans and vise versa. We took and walk while she smoked and just hung out until she went to bed. Somehow I was still determined despite my sleepiness to see more of Lyon’s smarmy streets and so I ventured out in search of photos and a nice French restaurant. After spending some time on the river and the nearly walking into a topless bar I found the restaurant that was recommended to me. In Lyon they call these classy restaurants “Bouchon” which means wine cork. I went inside and the owner seated me and asked me which three course meal I would like. I had no idea what anything meant even when he did his best to explain it to me so I just told him to bring me his favorite. This was probably one of the more upscale restaurants I’d ever been in. The first course was a small salad with a round sausage in the center of a thick slice of toasted bread and covered in a thick dark wine sauce. I loved it. The second was what looked like a fillet of chicken covered in burnt cheese but turned out to be a fillet of cheesecake (at least that’s what it tasted like) it was very rich and it was in a soup of spinach and thick cheese sauce. I loved it more. Everything was very filling and the bread was great. The desert was a raspberry tart and it was glorious. Overall I left feeling stretched and decadent. I rolled my way back up the hill to the Hostel and sat in a heap on the bed in the room. Lijah had woken and talked to the Trina and we talked a bit while I spent too much time on the internets. I ended up stupidly going to bed at about 3am and then we woke up to catch our train at 5am.