France 2023 - Day 1 / Lyon

Steps today : 16 894 / 11.14 km

And the adventure begins!

The flight over from Montreal was fine, the layover in Paris was a little long (about 4 hours) but as boring and tiering as that is, I rather be bored on a long layover than stressed-out trying to make a tight connection.

Customs was fine; it's all automated now a days. I always laugh when I am in the little booth and the instructions are to:

1 - Remove your glasses

2- Who the Hell knows! I am not wearing my glasses! LOLOL

Experience tells me its: look into the camera, but I have had flashing messages on the screens before that I couldn't read without my glasses - so overall the process isn't always so smooth!

Passing through security was a huge pain in the ass because of the whole liquids-thing. I travel carry-on only, but my mom brought a back pack. The idea was to leave all the liquids in her backpack so I don't have to unlock the suitcase and dig the bag out again and again, but that got too heavy so we packed them up. In Amsterdam, you don't have to take your liquids out (and why is that anyway? do they have more sophisticated scanning devices? it's certainly not due to laziness!) and since we did not see any signs or directions to take them out of our bags, I wondered if more airports were adopting this policy... NOPE. When we got to the belt, we were told to take them out. It's a pain because I have an actual key-lock, not a combination lock, so I have to dig out the key, pry the suitcase open to hopefully slide them out the top. This inevitably fails and I have to fully open up the suitcase, which usually means I am on the floor etc etc etc.  Anyway. Chalk it all up to the joys of travelling.

Once through, we found our transfer gate, sat and had a croissant, then wandered around until flight time.

We arrived at the Lyon airport train station around 1:30PM and took the train into town.

I was having a debate about my SIM card. My phone doesn't support eSIM, and I am too cheap to buy a card in advance because I don't want to pay for shipping. I knew there was an Orange store in the mall across the street from the train station in Lyon, but I figured stopping in would eat up into our time even more, so I nixed that idea and decided we'd to go straight to the hotel. The new plan was to go to the other Orange store location after checking in and dumping the bags at the hotel.

We arrived at the hotel by about 2:30PM and I was very happy. This is the 3rd time I stayed in the "Hotel B&B" chain and I would pick them again on future vacations without hesitation.

Clean, small, just the basics, plugs everywhere (especially near the bed which is important to me)... and best of all: CHEAP!

After checking in and unpacking, we set off to wander around. It was around 3PM by then, which felt to me like we lost a day, but that's the way it goes when you don't have a direct flight.

Lyon was so windy! This makes the THIRD time I visit Lyon in the wind, that can't be a coincidence!

As planned, we went to the Orange store, only to discover it was a one and a half hour wait for service to get a SIM card! ARGH. We didn't wait, instead we decided to go eat in the old town and swing back after supper.

Supper was very nice, a quaint corner "bouchon" serving local fare.  It was an early meal because we were getting quite tired by then (4PM ish) considering neither one of us really slept much on the flight over.

Dinner was nice, but dessert extra extra let me down. They had Saint-Marcellin cheese on the menu which is one of my favourites. Its a super-soft-runny cheese that is sold in little ceramic pots to help keep it's shape.  The taste is on the "rustic" side and I love it!  Well, look what I got... a congealed mass with dried up corners, obviously old.

We were fading fast after our meal and I was debating skipping the Orange store and just going the next morning.  I googled their store hours and discovered they were closed the next day - so no choice - we went back to the Orange Store and I successfully got my SIM card.  My local phone company's prices for data in Europe is too expensive: 16$ a day for HALF a gig per day.  With Orange, I got a 14-day 20-gig card for for 39€ good all over Europe.  No brainer.

We called it a day after that, went straight back to the hotel to settle in and were asleep in no time!