Saying Goodbye Lyon, Hello Toulouse

When I planned to travel around the world, I had a few must have cities, a few maybe cities and then added a few more to link the ones I had already chosen and also to add a bit of slack into the trip, and Lyon was one of these additional stop over locations and so in order for me to get the most out of the city I really should have done a bit more homework.

However, having said this, I was a bit surprised that the hostel did not have more fliers about things that I would be interested in, like for instance no matter how hard I looked there was no fliers or leaflets about the Roman museum and amphitheatre which was not ten minutes up the road, and for me this was the high point of the entire city tour.

One of the factors that I was relying upon when booking up the extra cities, was that I would be able to find a certain amount of information on the local area once I had arrived, but it would appear that this perhaps was not as wise as it seemed at the time.

Also, before I go any further, I feel that I should offer up some form of apology to the city of Lyon when I earlier commented that it was not a great city, is probably is, it just takes more than a few days and no previous knowledge or background research to get the best of a place. It is for this reason that I was happy to have friends in many of the cities that I plan to visit, and why I value their guidance and suggestions so much.

Another idea that seemed good at the time was to book a train at 7:10am in the morning to get from Lyon to Toulouse but when it came to it this wasn't such a hot idea, however as luck would have it I was struck with a case of insomnia { possibly due to the ticking of my alarm clock right next to my head so as not to wake the other dorm sleepers when it went off } and so I was up and about at 5am and almost on automatic I packed up all my belongings and checked out.

The train route from Lyon to Toulouse was not a direct one and it required a change at a city called Narbonne, and as the train out was over two hours later I decided, backpack and all, to go for a tiny wander and see what the city had to offer. Taking a half hour stroll around the train station I didn't spot anything that caught my eye enough for me to investigate further but I was a little put off when the restaurant I popped in said that the only thing they could offer was a sandwich.

It would appear that it is fairly frequent in France for restaurants to have bizarre opening times and only serve food at select times of the day, but on the upside at least you know when you do get served it will have been freshly prepared and not have been sitting around the kitchen or front counter all day long.

It was a great surprise for me to have my friend in Toulouse meet me at the train station and as luck would have it I had chosen a hotel very close to the train station, and so a five minute walk was all it took. After a quick freshener we left and took a casual walk down by the river to grab an ice-cream before travelling back to meet up with her partner in their apartment. Fortunately her partner also speaks good English, and so although throughout the weekend I will attempt to speak some French, the main language we will be using will be English.

My friend is an excellent host and guide and was keen to show me many of the local sights and explain as much as she could, like that Toulouse was famous for its style of bricks and brickwork which I would not have easily spotted otherwise.

At around 8pm we all went to a restaurant which they had booked in advance, and although the food was well presented and tasted fine the service was very sluggish and it turned out after that they had a huge group booking downstairs but still felt confident that one junior chef would be able to cope, which is to their detriment. The evening drew into nighttime and as it had also turned a little chilly I just jumped on the metro and then walked back from the nearest stop.

Tomorrow we have planned to go for a picnic and then visit a medieval castle called Carcassonne, which promises to be a great day out.