Day Two

So it turns out that yesterday when we arrived in the midst of a warm and sunny, albeit windy day, it was just Lyon lulling us into a false sense of security because today it is POURING. And thundering. And we have to lug our stuff all the way back to Lyon Part-Dieu, which involves a few blocks of walking and riding the tramway for several stops. Boo. Accuweather says we should have a two hour window of no rain between 1 and 3 pm (or, if you wanna get all French about it, 13h00 and 15h00), so hopefully we can make that work.

So far, though, I'm liking this trip. The hostel is really nice, aside from the fact that we don't have any hot water (or warm water. Or lukewarm water.), and I like the city. From what I can tell so far, it has a different vibe than American cities.

We haven't done a lot of real sightseeing yet, although we did walk around yesterday after getting dinner at a boulangerie et patisserie (bakery and pastry shop). I got cheese quiche and flan. The guy who worked there was very nice and didn't speak English, which forced us to use our French. He helped us out, though.

We walked around a little before heading back to the hostel for the night around 6. I stayed up until 11, though, to try and establish a normal sleeping pattern. I woke up around 8:15 this morning, so so far, so good. I'm a little tired still, but nothing a good night's sleep tonight won't fix. Hopefully.

I'm meeting my host family this afternoon. I'm still pretty nervous about this, since I don't feel like I have enough conversational French to really get to know anyone. Although I'm already realizing that I can get by with my French in public, so maybe I'm not as incompetent as I think.

Well, I should probably get up and get ready so I can head down to breakfast before it ends in an hour. And then I should figure out the best way to lug my stuff around so that both it and myself are not soaked through by the time we reach our destination.