Wednesday we moved on to Lyon. When we arrived at “Assistance”, the SNCF folks were a little testy - Wondering why we hadn’t booked earlier. Didn’t seem the moment to say we’d been trying for weeks. Not helped by a client in a wheelchair shouting at them that he was not going to be a victim!. Let’s just say the fellows behind the desk weren’t in a very cooperative mood, but we got signed in and helped onto the train as hoped. The train itself was great (why can’t we have such nice trains?) with plenty of room, spotless, a descending platform that took us down to the lower level of the train, and a large sparkling clean rest room, large enough for a wheelchair with built in rails for the disabled.
We connected with Marg and Chris at our Air BnB in an old Beaux Arts era building, not far from the Beaux Arts Museum. Pretty nice digs on the 6th floor, looking out onto a church and some lovely rooftops, with a large airy living room/dining room, a huge eat in kitchen and an upstairs with 2 bedrooms and its own bathroom so we had plenty of space. Our host Malika explained everything to us in very rapid French with abundant use of Google translate. We held on as tight as we could to what she was saying and mostly understood each other. I noted that she had what at first I thought was a verbal tick - she kept saying “Op!” (Or maybe Ahp), seemingly for emphasis at the end of a statement. As in, “You push this and then this and “Op!”. Since then, I’ve noticed this seems to be common in Lyon and later in Aix. Maybe one of you knows more about this linguistic oddity. If you look closely at the video, you’ll also see there was some alarming artwork on the walls (and marked for sale). We decided the less said, the better, but odd choices for a place that will have many varied visitors. Malika seemed relieved when we agreed there would be “no boys” in our party. We gave no further details, but all her worries seemed relieved when she saw all 4 of us - 2 of us with rollators. No wild parties from this bunch.
Getting settled in and resting a bit was all we managed before it was time to search for dinner. We found a Thai place a few blocks away. Not as good as some of the other ethnic restaurants we’d been to, but my dish - duck breast with red curry and coconut milk was really good.
That was about all we could manage for our first day in Lyon so back to the apartment to try out the beds (and fabulous shower).