Lyon - October 11, 2004

Well, my parents and sister are arriving this evening. They spent the weekend in Paris, they're going to be in Lyon with me until Friday, and then on Friday I leave with them to spend the next weekend in Paris, before they go home.

Last week, I finished my second round of classes, and our program's 6-week intensive language program. Starting today, I'm going to continue taking some language classes, but I'll be doing others as well, which should be more interesting. On Friday, I took my final exam, went home for lunch, then left to the train station, to go to Nice for the weekend with my group. I got there almost an hour early (1:30, for my 2:19 train), just in case. When I arrived, I looked at my ticket to find my train number, and this is what I saw:
Sunday, October 17thParis to Lyon...

Aaaaaaaahhhhhhhh!

So, I sprinted back to the metro, leapt through the doors just as it was leaving, took the metro to the tram stop, waited an agonizing 4 minutes for the tram to arrive, jumped aboard, then off again the instant it arrived to my stop, and began sprinting home, loaded down with my heavy backpack. Zzzzzzpppppppppp! The zipper on my backpack split, scattering all my clothes, books, etc, on the sidewalk behind me. Aaaaaahhhhhhhhhhh! So, I gathered all of them back in by bag, rezipped it, and began sprinting again, this time trying to hold my backpack closed behind me as I ran. I got home, fumbled, trying to put the key in the lock. Time: 1:55. 24 minutes until departure.

To my host dad: "Pant, pant, pant, est-ce que, pant, pant, vous pourriez, pant, pant, me conduire, pant, pant, à...""Oui, oui, bien sur."So, I grabbed my ticket, threw my backpack in my car, and tried to catch my breath as he drove me to the station. 2:00. 2:05. 2:10. He dropped me off at the station at 2:15, and I raced off to get on the train, just minutes before it departed. Whew!

I didn't actually have a seat for the first hour or so, but eventually I found the rest of my group, and a seat nearby. 5 hours later, we arrived in Nice. We stayed at a hostel there, the Villa Saint-Exupery, which I highly recommend if you ever find yourself in Nice. We got free breakfast, free internet, and a kitchen, for 16 bucks a night. The hostel was an old monastery, apparently. The chapel had been converted into a bar, which made for rather odd decor: a mix of stained glass windows and modern art; rock music; an altar with candles and flowers, which some drunk students danced on top of. Most of the people there, including the staff, were from English speaking countries. The guy who ran the place was very friendly: he gave us a lot of advice on what to do in or around Lyon. At his suggestion, we left Nice Saturday morning for Eze village - a kind of town/castle at the top of one of the hills, built in the 15th century. The town had obviously been built to be as defensible as possible - all the walls were very thick, and the narrow streets were almost corridors, between the shops. At the top of the hill there was a garden with exotic plants (cacti), that we didn't actually have time to go into. We had lunch there, bought post cards, and then departed for our next destination: Monaco.

The whole city is obscenely rich. It's all funded by rich people who don't want to pay the high tax rates in the rest of Europe. We saw the casino there, wandered around for a while, and got ice cream at Haagen Daz. I also bought cough syrup, so that I wouldn't keep everyone up with my coughing, like the night before. (I later discovered that it was cough expectorant, not suppresant, but it didn't matter because we all fell asleep immediately after going to bed). The streets there are spotless. We saw what looked like a palace there, but turned out to be the hospital. We went down into what we thought was a metro/train station entrance: all the walls were covered with polished mirrors, and the floors were marble. We wondered if maybe it was actually a casino entrance, but no, we were wrong on both guesses: it just led to the other side of the street. Apparently, that's what crosswalks look like in Monaco.

On the way back, we stopped at Cap D'ail (Garlic Cape), where we went swimming. The beach there was gorgeous, and water surprisingly warm, once we got used to it. We swam out along the cliff, to look into some caves in cliff side. It was the furthest I've ever swam, and when I got back, I was exhausted, and covered with scratches (from climbing back up the rocks to the beach, not from being battered against the cliffs). It was a very fulfilling experience. After arriving back in Nice that night, we got food at an Asian fast food place (I know, not exactly the cuisine the French Riviera is known for), then went back to the hostel. Later that night, I was talking to a couple of other students there.

"So, where are you from?" one of them asked me.
"I study at UC Santa Cruz, but I'm originally from Oregon."
"Where in Oregon?"
"Portland."
"What high school did you go to?"
"Beaverton High."
The two guys looked at each other.
"NO WAY! We're both from Beaverton. I went to Beaverton High!"
"Oh my god!"
"Hey, so, you're from Beaverton High, you must know C- F-?"
"He went to my elementary school!"
"J- G-?"
"Yeah!"
"R- S-?"
"Yeah!"
"I dated her!"
Turns out, he went to my middle school too, was in my year, and is now on vacation from his study abroad in Denmark. Unbelievable.

The next day, we didn't do as much, because it was pouring down rain in the morning. We were going to take a bus to the museum center in Nice, but at the bus stop we discovered it was another hour until the next bus. So, we took a bus into town instead, to have lunch. But, all the restaurants were expensive, so we decided to get food at the supermarket, and take it back to the hostel. We got pasta, pasta sauce, and soda, among other things - and discovered when we got back to the hostel that at the front desk they sell pasta, pasta sauce, and soda, among other things. So, it wasn't a particularly productive morning, but it was still fun. After lunch, we went to the train station, to catch out train back to Lyon.

That weekend, we'd been hanging out with Kyle, who is travelling across Europe, and who we'd met in the hostel the morning before. After spending the day with him, we all felt like we'd known him for years, and were sad that we'd never see him again - probably. It's a small world, and one never knows.

The weather had cleared up by then, and there were perfect blue skies. The ocean was gorgeous. All the way back to Lyon, we saw places that we just have to visit some time.