I couldn’t believe I was already in Lyon. It only felt like yesterday that I had left Brampton to start this amazing trip. Being in Lyon was bitter sweet for me. It was sad because it meant that I only had 6 days left of my trip, and I didn’t want to leave and go back to the real world where I had to work and worry about paying back my OSAP. But I was also a bit happy because it meant that in 6 days I would be going home. I missed my family and friends way more than I expected. When I arrived in Ireland by myself I missed my family. I’d been sitting in the common room of our hostel and started tearing up. I was on Facebook with my sister and at one point I remember telling her that if Tessa didn’t get there soon I was packing up my bags and coming home (if you remember Tessa got lost so I was waiting anxiously for her arrival…thank goodness she did make it cause I would have missed out on an amazing time and experience). This was the longest time I’ve been away from home so I was glad that I would be back soon.
January 13, 2013:
The train from Paris to Lyon was a double decker train! At the time I was so surprised because I’ve never seen one, but then I remembered that the GO trains here are double decker, silly me. There were a lot of discrepancies on the train because people kept getting into the wrong cabin and would ask the people already sitting in their seats that they had to move. This happened more than once, believe it or not. Everyone in our cabin was laughing, and even though I didn’t understand everything they were saying, I understood what was happening so I got to laugh along without it seeming like I was just laughing for the sake of laughing with everyone else.
I had started reading Life of Pi on our trip and fell in love with the book from the minute I started reading it. When we started to leave the station I pulled it out and started reading, only to realize that I had almost finished it, but I was so in love with the book, that rather than finish it I would put it down and sleep instead. I’m not one to be able to sleep comfortably on any transportation but I fell asleep fast, and woke up to drool on my jacket (I never drool!).
When we got into Lyon it was dark so I didn’t get to see exactly what Tessa had fallen in love with right away. Tessa told me that her friend Hattie was coming in at the same time as we were so we waited. I was looking around for Hattie, only to realize I had no idea what Hattie looks like so there was no point in me really looking. We finally found her (we were standing across from each other the whole time), bought my tickets for the metro and we were off. Of course the metro was packed and if you saw how big my backpack was you’d understand how being on a packed metro can make this difficult...
Tessa’s friend Danielle and Olga were meeting us at Tessa’s place to have dinner and then go out to a friend of Danielle’s restaurant and then drinks after that. I showered quickly and got ready. Dinner was so good: I had about 4 bowls of pasta, and like a million pieces of bread. Bread in France is nothing like bread here…it’s like 10 times better. So fresh, so good. There’s actually someone that bakes bread ALL day…that’s their job, to constantly make bread. I wish we had that here…but then I’d probably be fat.
After dinner we had this dessert that Hattie brought over. After a few minutes, I bit into something: “There’s a man in my dessert!” and in my dessert there was an Avengers toy. Everyone laughed and Danielle explained to us the French tradition on why there was a toy in my desert. This also meant that I had to wear the crown that came with the dessert.
January 14, 2013:
Danielle and Olga had spent the night at Tessa's as well. The next morning we got up and we went to Frites Alors! for lunch, which is actually a restaurant from Québec. I had a veggie burger, a salad and French fries. I’ve learned that in France, it is very hard to be a vegetarian, especially when you’re a picky vegetarian who doesn’t really like fish. After lunch, we all parted ways and Tessa and I went back home and caught up on Miranda and Glee.
For dinner we made a stir fry with Tessa’s roommates Alex and Morgane. It was delicious! I think I had like 4 plates…not even kidding. The three of them all talked in French, and I can pick up on some French but they talk SO fast so it was a bit hard. They did include me in the conversation at times which was good. Alex had a blow up mattress which he lent me so I didn’t have to sleep on the floor in a sleeping bag which was really nice of him. Before bed (since Tessa had class in the morning), we watched Les Misérables. It was so good. If you haven’t seen it, I highly recommend it.
January 15, 2013:
I slept in for a bit while Tessa was in class and then showered and got ready because Liz and Tim were coming to Lyon from Greece! I looked outside and what do I see? … SNOW! We didn’t get any snow our whole trip and finally Lyon gave me the joys of snow.
Tessa had a dance class she had to get to so we started making dinner, only to realize that there wouldn’t be enough time to eat them, so we left them in the oven and went to Tessa’s dance class. It was for a dance style called Rock. It was really cool. Hattie and I were partners, and I’m the worst coordinated person ever, so I’m sure I made the worst partner (though Hattie says differently but I’m sure that’s just to spare my feelings).
After Rock was done, we went back to Tessa’s and ate the stuffed peppers and watched more Youtube videos.
January 16, 2013:
Liz and Tim came back to Tessa’s in the morning and we went for lunch. We went to a real Lyonnaise restaurant (called a bouchon) for lunch and I had fish! It was called coalfish and it wasn’t bad. After lunch we took the metro up a hill to the Basilique de Fourvière. It was under construction so we weren’t allowed in but we went and saw the crypts.
Hattie invited us for dinner. She was making a vegetarian curry. We stopped at the grocery store on our way home and bought two loaves of bread and cheese. We ate one loaf of bread before we even went to Hattie’s because it’s just that good, we couldn’t wait. Tim made dhal and while we were waiting for it to be done we started watching My Big Fat Greek Wedding. We didn’t get a chance to finish it because we had to go to Hattie’s. Dinner was delicious and again I ate so much.
We met Hattie’s roommates who were very nice and very talkative, but that’s good cause we’re a talkative bunch, there was never a dhal moment (haha get it). We then invited Hattie back to Tessa’s to finish watching the movie with us. Liz and Tim left early to catch the last metro back to their hostel.
January 17, 2013:
Liz and Tim left today, and I was also leaving Lyon to go back to London to go home. They came over to Tessa’s around 10ish for tea before they took a train to Paris. It was so nice to get to spend a couple days with them. It felt like we had known them forever and that we were all old friends, not people who we had just meet a month ago.
After I finished we got ready and met Danielle for lunch for dim sum. I had Coke from a bottle and I don’t know what it is, but it tastes so much better from a bottle. After lunch we walked around a bit and went to this café where I got a white chocolate brioche. I saved it for my flight because I knew I’d get hungry. When we got back to Tessa’s we watched New Girl.
We still had a bit of time before we had to leave to take the metro to the airport, so we walked to the post office so I could mail my post cards. We got back to Tessa’s place, grabbed my stuff and we made our way to the airport. When we got to the airport, we had to walk a million miles to get to Terminal 3. We got there a bit early, so we waited around until I was able to check in.
After I checked in Tessa walked me to the gate and we had a tearful goodbye. After not seeing your best friend for so long and then spending a whole month together, you’re bound to have a tearful goodbye. I made it onto my flight only to have sit in someone else’s seat because I read my seat number wrong but they said it was alright and I moved to my actual seat. It was smooth sailing from there to London.
January 18, 2013:
I couldn’t believe that the day had come to finally go home! I had to be up early to catch my train to the airport since my flight was at 9:35am. After checking in, I went to duty free. There’s something about chocolate in England that taste WAY better than the chocolate here, I don’t know what it is. I ended up spending $50 on chocolate to bring home. I bought Miranda Hart’s book since I had finished all the books on my Kobo. Miranda Hart is probably the funniest person, people must have thought I was crazy, sitting there reading this book and laughing constantly.
About 4 hours into the flight, I heard the flight attendants talking (I was sitting at the back of the plane) and I didn’t want them to know I was listening so I took one of my headphones out and listened. I heard that some lady had tried to open the emergency exit while we were flying! They had restrained her and were bringing her to the back of the plane to sit. Before I learned all of this, I had seen this lady come to the back of the plane and she literally stood by my seat and stared at me until they asked her what she wanted and she said water. I thought to myself “That lady is crazy”…and it turns out she actually was!
I tend to blow things out of proportion and I thought for sure was going to die on this plane before I made it home. She kept taking the seat belt off and they kept putting her back in her seat. At one point she tried to talk to me in whatever language she spoke and I just pretended that I couldn’t hear her over my music. All I wanted to do was sleep on the plane but I was scared that she was going to steal my stuff…I know I was being paranoid but you never know!
If you’ve never been on a plane, they have these things over the top of the seat and she kept trying to flip them over. The lady in front of her was sleeping and she moved the lady’s head so that she could flip over this piece of material. Then she kept throwing all the books that are in the pouch in front of you. She was actually crazy!
I then thought that we would have to stop at the first airport to let her off because normally that’s what they do but we continued on our way. We made it safe and sound to Toronto (thank goodness). It made being home that much better because it meant she didn’t take over the plane and I was still alive.
When we were leaving, the lady whose head she had moved, said that her brother was the one that checked her in and she wasn’t supposed to travel alone because she actually was insane. We got off the plane and had to go through customs and I finally got to see my mum! What a happy sight! Even though I had the best time, it was so nice to finally be home. I can’t wait to find out what my next adventure will be.
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