I spend a good few minutes repacking and dumping as much extra weight as I could, as I have been carrying a lot of junk and stuff that could be sent back home, and as I was sending home a package of all the maps, tickets, brochures and receipts that I have been hording it was the prefect opportunity to lighten the load.
I arrived at the train station about 3 1/2 hours early, and as usual had no problems catching an early connection.
When I planned and prepared the journeys I did not want to give myself any pressure of having to be up at ridiculous o'clock in the morning, as I could never be sure how close to the airport or train station I would be, but it has happened now on a few occasions that I have been ready to leave that much earlier that it seems a waste of time to kill at this end when it could be spent at the other end exploring a new city.
The bus journey was just over two hours long and in a way it is a shame that there are so many trees along the route as there was some lovely views that were too frequently obscured by trees to capture of camera, although I tried a few times of course they were just green blurs in the end.
Travelling up and across to France I could see far in the distance a wedge between two mountain ranges and it this cleft that we headed towards, getting all the more majestic as it rose up on both sides of the road.
For the briefest of moment I thought that we were going the long way round as again and again we ignored turning for Lyon, but then it all became clear as we turned onto a toll highway and suddenly the logic that we were taking the quick but expensive route struck me.
Arriving in Lyon I decided to obtain a set of 10 Lyon network tickets for EU $12, as I could not see any way of getting the Lyon Pass as I had been given freely in Geneva, and it was not until later at the tourist office that I spotted a place to obtain this travel card.
As I had been on the road now for 24 days I decided that, apart from my blog and text messages, it would be nice for the folks back home for me to check in by phone, however with typical timing my mother was out and so the best I could do was leave her an answer phone message. I had better luck with my sister and we had a nice natter for a few minutes before I remembered that it was costing me a small fortune and so I had to say goodbye for now.
I could not check into my hostel until 2pm and because of my early departure from Geneva I had arrived around midday, so I stopped off for a snack in a nearby restaurant and and even managed to get a free wifi connection while tucking into the tastiest Calamari I have ever tasted. I'm not a big lettuce eater and the vinaigrette they had flooded it with was never going to improve that, but still calamari and two cokes for only EU $17 is still reasonably good value.
The trek up to the hostel was the longest four minutes of my life, as the road to the hostel is all up hill, and when I say that I don't mean a slight or gentle little incline but the kind where I had to pause for "photo opportunity" breaks at least twice, or at least that's what I kept telling myself as I took them. Once I got there, I had a tiny wait and then I could check in, and sad to say that whatever the ratings that other people gave this place it was more than it deserved.
It may have a view overlooking the city, but the city from there isn't much to look at, its all up hill getting there, there are not enough plug sockets to go round, and the ones that are are too close to the bed for me to use my adapter and so for awhile I was actually sat on the landing just to get a bit of charge back into the battery. There rooms are basic, six men to a room instead of the four I had hoped for, no lockers for my rucksack and the mini lockers that you can use to hold your valuables needs a padlock ( which they don't provide for free ) and is only big enough for a few odds and ends, not a laptop and wallet, etc.
Although there is free wifi, you have to have the luck of the gods to connect to it, as I tried repeatedly all day to get a signal but couldn't and I wasn't the only one, and so all in all, it is again a situation here perhaps a few more Euros per night could have afforded me a much better place to rest up for the night.
Having said that, I took a long afternoon stroll around the city and the rest of the city wasn't in that much of a better shape. Zone 1 is a complete dump, with graffiti everywhere and despite it having the ballet and a base for the Scientologists to call home in the city, I would much prefer to reside in either zone 2 or 3.
Also in zone 1 was the pitifully few nightclubs and strip bars that the city offered, its night scene mainly consists of restaurants and the arts, and as I passed the biggest of the strip joints I mildly wondered how rich I would have to become before EU $300 for just a quick ten minute private lap dance would no longer seem just the biggest rip-off on the entire planet.
Historically it got a bit better, as I found some ancient Roman ruins suitably called "L'Amphitheatre trois Gaules" and so I took plenty of piccies of that from just about every angle that I could get. There was even a nice restaurant right next to it called the 3 Gauls, however the chef only cooks lunchtime and night times so early afternoon come evening was a no hoper for a snack.
What got me was that all the city buildings seem so very close together and tall, seven stories high just for a normal terraced building, and it meant that unless the sun is right over head the cobbled alleyway must be in almost perpetual shadow, which might explain why there was so much graffiti everywhere, and in some places the burn out shells of shops made me feel like I was in some kind of Bladerunner nightmare city scene.
Back at the hostel some guy must have had a bigger accident than a jelly bear as for about 5 minutes all I could hear was a weird pseudo scream / cry / yell and then a few minutes after a paramedic arrived, though they must have exited from another route as I never saw them or the screeching casualty leave.
I think that I will have to drag my pc down to the cafe again tomorrow, as this hostel is really doing my head in, and I am glad that I am not here for longer as I don't think I could cope, I really don't.
Lastly I just want to say that Lyon is much hillier than I expected and they have done little to try and level it out, I mean, just look at the state of that tube stop!
Anyway, here's plenty of photos to keep you amused and I hope you don't mind but I seem to have developed a fondness for photographing bridges, maybe its the budding architect in me.
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