December 24th

So the last time I left you at Innsbruck, Austria. Well, the next city we went to was Nice.

Nice was NICE! I enjoyed this place so much I think I might come back...maybe in summer when all the french gays come along and hang out at the beach naked...
Anyway, I like how this place is quaint and small, but its big enough to have everything I would ever want and need. I love how the beach is sandless, but full of beautiful white stones.

We went to Monaco for a super dinner and went and saw Monte Carlo. Its rather overated, and very over the top.

My first day in France, which was in Nice, we had to walk downtown to this restaurant for dinner. On our way there, I was busy talking I didn't look where I was going and hit my left knee on one of the street poles. After many days walking French street, I realised French streets have these little short concrete stubs which stick out of the street. I think they're there to separate footpath from road. Damn that stub, it left me with a bleeding knee.

So after 2 nights in Nice, we moved on to the gastronomy that is Lyon. We got in late and we had the most amazing dinner. Snails, duck, and creme caramel (my favourite dessert) for 20 euros. Hilary got sick half way thru mains and left....so Jen and I contemplated having her dessert. But when dessert came, we were so stuffed we decided to skip it.

Dinner took ages so we missed the bus home. That restaurant was so full it took ages for the courses to come out. While walking down the street with Jen to find a cab home, we stumbled upon a metro station. So I suggested, "why not take the metro home" and we can catch a cab home from the station, so its cheaper.

Anyway, we didn't quite know where we lived, but we know it was generally north-west of the city. We proceded to buy the ticket. I'd bought my ticket when Jen says she doesn't have any coins to buy the ticket. There were no shops open around, so we decided to abandon the metro thing and just catch a cab home.

While looking for a cab on the main street, we stumbled on a convenient store, where Jen then decides to buy a bottle of water. She went on to pay the cashier 20euros for a 0.60 euro water. The guy didn't really want to take our cash, so I lend Jen a 5 euro note. Still not satisfied, the Frenchman said he saw some coins in my hand. I then signalled and said it was for the train, and we need more. Anyway, this whole thing took a while because that guy didn't speak english.

We finally made it back to the metro station and got our ticket. We headed down to the platform and we realised we didn't know which direction we were going and which stop we were getting off. So we had to resurface and take another look at the metro map.

Anyway, we finally made it to our station, and got another non-english-speaking frenchman to explain the way back to our hotel. He tells us to catch a bus. And so we did. We waited and waited but no bus came. We then decide to walk over to a best western (we saw the bright neon light about 500m away). Thank god this guy spoke english. We took out a japanese map and proceeded to draw the way back to our hotel. We were to walk home because the football match on that night took all the taxis out of immediate service. So we walked and walked, and this dodgy guy started following us.

Jen tried to hide her map so as not to indicate we were tourist. I glared back at him, at which point I think he stopped following us.

We got lost once and finally made it to the intersection of our street. It was a 5 way intersection with our street name spelled wrong. We hoped it was the right street, and hoping the address on our sheet was a typo. And we started climbing the hill.
The neon sign of our hotel greeted us, and it took us 1.5hrs to get home!

The next morning, we saw the big hotel sign at the 5-way intersection which we totally missed!

Anyway, that was our Lyon adventure!

The next morning we rushed off to Paris.