Bonjour again! After a packed first leg in Lyon, I finally have a moment to sit down and do a bit of writing about my travels so far. I am typing this now from my hostel in Geneva, where I’ll be staying for the next few days, but I thought I’d share some of the highlights from Lyon and look ahead to what I’ll be doing here in Switzerland.
I set off for Lyon early in the morning on February 8th. My trip consisted of 3 trains total: one from my small town to Reims, one from Reims to Paris, and a final one from Paris to Lyon. The first leg went smoothly, but leg 2 was a different story. We set off on time, but about 10 minutes into the trip, the train came to a screeching halt. The conductor helpfully announced that there was a problem and he’d update us as soon as he knew what it was. I already had a sinking feeling at this point that I wasn’t going to make my last train; I was initially supposed to have just under an hour to transfer stations in Paris, which would take about 20 minutes, and my window of time was rapidly shrinking as we sat on the tracks. It was eventually announced that there was a technical problem with the train, and we ended up in Paris about 40 minutes later than we were supposed to.
“Spoiler alert:
I missed that third train.”
Luckily, I ran into a friend in the Paris metro who was also traveling to Lyon, so we transferred stations together and I was able to exchange my ticket for a later train.
Ordinarily this wouldn’t have been anything more than a minor inconvenience, but I had scheduled an interview with some filmmakers in Lyon for right after my initial arrival. My later arrival time meant I had to reschedule the interview, which didn’t seem like a great start to the trip. It turned out to be a blessing in disguise, however, because I was able to get settled in my hostel and wolf down some falafel before doing a bit of exploring in the city on my own.
.....à suivre.
.....to be continued.