Sunday, March 04, 2007

Day 3: Lyon

Or rather, the day I got sick. So this will be a shorter post.

We started out with a 8am train ride from Paris to Lyon. I got to see some of the French countryside.


Upon arriving in Lyon, I immediately fell in love with this gorgeous palace-like church that sits atop a hill overlooking Lyon. It is called Notre Dame de Fourvière.

That structure to the right of the church is not an Eiffel Tower replica; it's just a communications tower.

I guess we happened to arrive the day the carnival was in town. Either that or they put up the Ferris Wheel every Sunday...

The next day they were taking it down.

We were taken to our hotel for that night, the Hotel Royal. The original plan was to stay at the Sofitel Lyon both nights in Lyon, but they changed plans and checked us into this hotel for the night. And I'm glad we did because it was a very charming hotel. We did a site inspection of this hotel and saw some cool views from the rooms:


Some rooms had quaint balconies like this one:


All the rooms in the hotel were either blue or red, and some had two beds and some had king beds. I remember hoping for a blue king bed. :) After that inspection, we were bussed to the Novotel Lyon Bron further out in the suburbs. We did another inspection and had lunch here. During all this I was becoming increasingly aware that I was not feeling good. My head was cloudy and I felt like I was walking around in a dizzy half-daze. I was coughing painfully as well. One of the other girls noticed I wasn't looking well and asked me if I wanted to go back to the hotel. I nodded yes and she arranged to have the driver take them all to their next hotel inspection and then drop me back off at the Hotel Royal, where I checked in and took refuge in my blue, king-bed room:

I spent most of the rest of the day in this bed. At least it was comfortable!!

Since this room was so important to the rest of my day, here it is from a different view:


I'm not sure what I had... respiratory infection or the start of just a really bad cold. Maybe my body was rebelling against the extremely busy itinerary going on jet lag and not a lot of sleep. I had barely slept at all the previous night at the Sofitel Grande Arche. Whatever. I was drained, weak, and could not stop coughing. One of the group came over later with a bucket of ice and a Diet Coke and some water, and I hardly had any voice to talk to him with. And while they were all at a lovely dinner at the Sofitel Lyon, I ordered room service and got "foie gras du canard," which ended up being some pasty stuff in a tub that smelled like, well, dog poo. No wonder that stuff is banned in Chicago... Anyways then I took a bubble bath and headed to bed, hoping to feel better the next day.

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1 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

DAMN that's all cool.

3/05/2007 2:38 PM  

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