Saturday, 4 July, 2015 – continued

We had been hearing about a heat wave in France, Switzerland etc for a few days. Sure enough, as we are about to land in Lyon the Captain tells us that it is 40C and it is 6:00 PM!

The Immigration queue in Lyon is not too bad, last time we landed there it was awful. We get our suitcases and after finding out that we had enough Euros to pay for a taxi into town, we jump in one. (Maybe next time we will try the Train as the taxi cost 55 Euro.) We are staying in an Airbnb apartment run by Odile. She has told us to tell the Taxi driver to go up a narrow lane way near the apartment and that sometimes drivers will refuse to do so.

Any way, when we get there the driver goes up to the laneway. As he stops and we get out, a surprise is Odile’s Husband is there to help us with our suitcases. The apartment turns out to be in a very old building up one flight of very old circular stairs. Odile is waiting at the door and we enter a totally remodelled modern apartment with the latest appliances etc. Odile is a delightful person and has left us with some useful goodies. There is no air-conditioning and it is very hot but there is nothing she could do about that other than to point out that there is a modern fan that we use throughout the stay.

After we have settled in, and started some washing as there was a real pile of dirty clothes, we decide to go out for some food. We are in an area surrounded by restaurants. We go around in a big circle and end up picking one right across the street from the apartment. A very nice lady serves us.

There is some excitement, actually concern, when we get to the apartment. There is a trick for opening the door with the key and we clearly did not have that trick. We fiddled around for nearly 30 minutes, and I was quite prepared to sleep on the stairs when somehow I managed to open the lock – more good luck that good managment. After such a long day, three countries, one timezone, etc., we crash out in spite of the heat.