We had our breakfast quickly, gave Chrystelle one of our Paua shells, and bade farewell to everyone there. We decided we would try and avoid the highways as they were mainly toll roads and we had heaps of time to get there. We drove for an hour and a half though lots of lovely little French villages and beautiful green countryside before we connected up with the motorway close to Lyon.
Then, disaster! We followed our instructions but they were a bit ambiguous in one place and we took a wrong turn inside Lyon. A labyrinth of one way streets and hard-to-find street names sent us further off course and our attempts to get back to something recognisable failed entirely. We spent a good two hours before we happened upon an Office de Tourisme where we could find a good map of Lyon. Unfortunately, even having a good map isn’t necessarily enough as the labyrinth swallowed us up again and we watched our TGV fly overhead without us.
We eventually found our station and parked in the underground carpark. We met a friendly girl who spoke a little English so Lou spoke very well to her in French and we discovered that the tickets were non-transferable so we would have to buy new tickets. Our travel insurance would have to be used after all. I found the Europcar office, moved the car to the Europcar carpark (feeling very distressed about having to drive the car in Lyon again), and met up with Lou to transfer the gear. As she dropped off the key, I queued for more tickets for a train that would leave two hours after our original train so we hadn’t lost much time.
We waited on the platform for the TGV (which was 20 minutes late) and managed to get ourselves on board with all our gear. Fortunately a nice Frenchman gave us a hand and showed us which car we were to sit in. The TGV was very fast but unfortunately it didn’t feel like we were going over 300 kph. However, I was glad to not be driving anymore and could finally sit back and relax. I had downloaded a new Baby Einstein for Will and he watched it for a lot of the trip while Lou and I had a power nap. Before we knew it, we arrived in Paris and disembarked.
We initially couldn’t decide whether to catch the Metro or take a taxi but I decided I couldn’t be bothered thinking too hard so we went to catch a taxi instead. Will fell asleep in the backpack as we queued up for taxis, and another nice man (there are a lot of them around to help us) pulled us out of the queue and gave us a large taxi that was waiting. We were very thankful as the queue was long and in direct sunlight.
I became even more glad we weren’t driving as the taxi drove onto a large roundabout that had no lines and 5 or so lanes (I couldn’t really be sure exactly how many there really were). We were delivered to our accommodation for a good price of €11. There was no sign or street numbers but we had been given great instructions. We entered through a large gate and walked down a scummy alley to the front door. There was a keypad entry and an old elevator beside a staircase. The door wouldn’t open on the third floor and I saw a note (which I couldn’t read but assumed it was an out of order sign) and suggested we go up to the fourth floor and drag our suitcases downstairs. There was another keypad on the landing and our apartment was down a long corridor.
The apartment is small but very useable and has everything we need. Our bed is on a mezzanine type floor and the spare bed is a fold out couch. There is a computer available for free use and I found a helpful set of notes left by previous tenants. There was also a complimentary bottle of wine left for us which didn’t last long after the day we’d just had.
After unpacking, I discovered that I couldn’t find our camera, and while we were contemplating its potential theft on the TGV, a man from Europcar rang and informed us that we had left it in the glove box. It is up to us to arrange a courier to collect it from Europcar and deliver it to wherever we will be. This is made difficult by the fact that tomorrow is Bastille Day and the following day is a Sunday so most things will be shut including La Poste.
We took a short walk around the corner to the Monoprix supermarket and bought a few things for dinner. After dinner, the used Voipbuster to call home. Our friend Millie, an Australian ex-kiwi living in London, was due to arrive around midnight so we stayed up until she arrived. We all crashed fairly quickly after we had shown her around.