A good friend from back home asked me what I thought of the sexy women here, and truth be told so far I haven't seen enough to comment either way.
Today was linen day, as it was the last day I have on my own before I meet up with some friends in Toulouse and so I wanted to be fresh and with the greatest choice of clothes, as I would hate to be falling asleep and missing anything exciting after coming all this way to meet them.
I can't say that I did much today, except learn that in a Lyonnais launderette a Hors Service is not what it sounds like, but it is actually a sign telling you that the machine is out of order, and also that when drying your clothes you can either burn them on high heat or pay for three repeat cycles on warm heat, or leave with still slightly damp clothes of course.
In the launderette I met up with a couple of Aussie students who were living here in Lyon for a year as part of a exchange program. They also confirmed that travelling is in the culture and the mindset of almost every young Aussie, but didn't necessarily say that there was any pressure to do it, just something that they all seemed to want to do. I suspect that there has a little bit of subliminal mental programming there, as in on the a subconscious level, for an entire nation of young adults to want to leave a warm, sunny and peaceful country to come to travel around Europe of all places.
I also have decided that my choice of clothes was a mistake, as I have got a full load split into whites and non-whites. As I am trying to save money and time, it would have made more sense to bring just coloured clothes and leave my whites behind as now I have to do two loads and one is mainly for white socks, which is a waste.
Back in the hostel after I decided to doze for a bit and then go out to see what mischief I could get up to after dark, seeing as I haven't been out late in almost a week and its my last night in Lyon.
As I only had a few transport tickets left I chose to walk down the hill and into town, as then I always have the problem of using them to go to other places for just bring me back, whatever proves most enticing. I had heard that the most happening parts of the city were near Ville de Hotel, so I took a casual stroll along there and found it to be exactly as I though, full of restaurants but not a lot else.
In most cities around the world, pink, blue and red neon lights after 10pm normally mean one thing, a club of some description and more often than not one that is either exotic, erotic or both. Here in Lyon it also means one one thing, but the thing is the choice of restaurant that it is, with blue being mostly kebabs / halal meats and red being an Indian or curry houses.
At one stage I found a group of drunken revelers wandering in some vague direction, with one of them blindfolded and made to look a complete fool, and from the sign around his neck I gather that he had just completed his finals or qualified as something. I had a notion that they might take him to a strip club or something to celebrate, as I thought that he must be blindfolded for a reason, but after trailing them for about ten minutes it was clear that they were all too drunk to find anywhere even if they knew where it was and had a route master to guide them home!
I must have been wandering for about an hour and I was all about to give up and say that Lyon is almost sterile on the nightclub front, when I spotted two little red lanterns hanging either side of a doorway near the riverfront. Filled with what exciting possibilities it might be I crept up and was a little disappointed with the fact that it was only a swingers club, which meant really just a place where exhibitionists took their willing partners to have sex in semi public. Not really the kind of place a single foreigner who speaks none of the local language should go, and certainly not for an entrance fee of EU $50 when the traveler is on a tight budget.
So instead I took myself home again, sad to report that the nightlife of Lyon was even less than I expected and as I had already been through the rest of Europe to get here, for me the myths about French and sex is totally busted!
Tomorrow I am on a very early train out of town, so I must be up at 6am so although its a short blog entry, its the best I can do with the time and the city I am in.
Bon chance.
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