From LA to Lyon - Day 1

My first full day in Lyon. What a doozy these past few days have been. I don’t even know where to begin.

Three hours prior to departure at the airport, a 10.5-hour flight, 5-hour layover in Paris and a 2.5-hour train ride – all on ZERO sleep, I was toast by the time I got to Lyon. I got a taxi easily outside of the train station and we headed to the Air BnB. The driver did not take the scenic route, so I wasn’t wowed by the beauty of Lyon. As we pull onto the street where my Airbnb is I am even less impressed. Great, this is not the entrance I wanted to my new home.

I enter the unattractive, unassuming building with four bags and a dog and have to climb to the first floor, old concrete stairs. No easy feat with bulging discs in my back. I finally make it into the flat. Poor Copper has not went to the bathroom since Los Angeles. I take her out, find a grassy spot and boom, torrential downpour. We are soaked in seconds, unfortunately we are not seconds from the flat, we are several minutes. We finally make it back, soaked to the bone, dry off and I honestly don’t remember anything after that. I think it was around 6:30pm. I know I texted a few people, which at this point has to be as close to drunk texting as I have done in years. I was in bed by 7pm. I tried as hard as I could to make until 9pm. No go. In bed passed out at 7pm. Up, wide awake at 1am, did not go back to sleep. I’m pretty sure I woke up crying, or maybe I started crying around 3:30am. I know I wanted to stop crying before I called my mom so I didn’t worry her and that was at 4:00am.

Finally, 6:30am, the sun is up. So we get up, we’re up anyway. I take Copper on a walk so she can go to the bathroom. Then we come home, there is no food, I’m starving. We get ready to go to the market, which is a one hour walk away. We hit the pavement at 8:30am, set to arrive at the market by 9:30am. As we are walking, I am realizing right away I don’t like where I am staying, it is FAR from everything. It is the very North of the city. Also on my walk, I am not seeing pretty France. That is starting to stress me out. I have watched so many videos of this city, is it not pretty in person? That is what I get for moving to a city I have never been to. Who does that?

Also, as I am walking, I am about 35 minutes in, not one boulangerie. I am in France for God’s sake, WTF! At 50 minutes in I see PAUL, a chain pastry place, but still good. I order my pain au chocolate which had just come out of the oven. Sweet Baby Jesus! There are no words.

After my life changing croissant, we are just down the street from the market. Copper and I are both on overwhelm. I wanted to take pictures and video the experience, but I was so in the moment I just couldn’t. I did take pictures of the flowers. I always take pictures of the flowers, but this time I got to buy the flowers. I live in France; I buy the flowers now!

I am such an instant gratification shopper, but there was so much that I decided not to get anything until I walked the entire market. Once I had done that I knew where I wanted to get my baguette from, the pizza bread that was incredible, the pistachio pastry, that is very very sweet and a traditional pastry here in Lyon. I was going to buy the roasted chicken for dinner but got the slice of ham that was the size of a steak and then corn and potatoes. I got some raspberries, bananas, fresh squeezed OJ and a giant artichoke…. And of course, flowers.

With my giant bags of food, I am realizing I cannot wait until my birthday present from Steve comes, my wheelie grocery cart – much needed. I head across the bridge to an artist market. Ended up buying a small piece of art. Now I’m exhausted and need to get an uber home.

What I feel like when I get home is, yes I loved the market but everything I have seen today was not that pretty. I want to live in pretty France. Did I make a mistake moving here?

I spend the afternoon getting the Airbnb set up, unpack, etc. The rest of the day it is meant to rain. I take a nap, I think might have been lifesaving to set me on the right time schedule.

Around 5pm the rain has subsided, so I take Copper out. We are outside for under 3 minutes and the Gods opened the clouds and dumped an entire ocean on us…then all the thunder and lightning followed. I had a useless umbrella and was thinking as I see all these people running and hiding under things… am I going to get hit by lightning? It was raining so hard that I missed the spot to go back to my place and ended up being out way longer and lost. By the time we got back my clothes were dripping wet. It took all night to dry them on the towel warmer. (Thank you France for towel warmers). All I could think about beside being hit by lightning, was that this was living the dream in France.