Lyon

The drive to Lyon could have taken us around 2 hours, but as the highways in France are tolled, we needed to stay off the highways and use the back roads once again. The drive took us around 7 hours instead. The longest part of the drive was heading through Lyon’s downtown area which happened to be packed with traffic. The drive itself though was great. We were in or near France’s part of the Alps so it was very scenic. We had spent the previous night finishing our plans for the winter months and our first stop for France was supposed to be Chamonix. This Alp town, we figure, would have been too cold to visit so we ruled it out and decided to head to Lyon, our second city on the list. We arrived at the campsite in Lyon at 8pm which was exactly when they are supposed to close. We stayed for two nights and spent most of our time trying to find a phone that worked with Julie’s phone card (we didn’t find one), buy food and shower. Since I have been extremely behind in my blog updates I also spent the better part of the day getting caught up on writing them. The main sites to see in Lyon were some buildings along the river, but we saw them partially during the drive so we decided once again to move on to our next destination, Cognac. We also woke up today to realize that France has recognized day light savings time. That was funny for us, because it didn’t change much, but gave us an extra hour before check out. On our first day in the Lyon Campground, we managed to show up at the same time as the cleaners for our showers. Thwarted, we made our way back to the van and a moment later there came a knock on the van. A man and his daughter were standing there with 3 grocery bags and asked us if we speak English. Turns out they are from British Columbia and on there last day of travels. They had extra food and were wondering if we could use it. Of course we took it, we were both so blown away by this that we didn’t even get a chance to introduce ourselves or learn their names. When they left, Julie and I sat stunned. Another moment passed and there was another knock, again the same people with another 2 bags. They gave us all their pots and pans and utensils and some more food they found. It was all pretty amazing.