We woke up to steady rain and a major holiday! I knew it was going to be a big holiday and most things would be closed, but I had hoped we could go check out Parc de la Tete d'Or, a big park with a zoo at the north end of Lyon . . . but the rain put an end to that. Knowing that the rain was coming and that it was going to be a big holiday, we had changed our 4:00 PM Paris train tickets to 2:00 PM and we were glad.
After eating breakfast we finished packing and just hung out at the apartment until close to the noon check out time before stowing our bags in the lobby and heading out to look for someplace to have lunch. The May 1 public holiday in France is officially known as La Fete du Travail (National Labor Day), but it is also called La Fete du Muguet (Lily of the Valley Day). It is the tradition on this day to offer a sprig of lily of the valley ("muguet" in French) to loved ones, and we had been seeing them being sold everywhere the whole time we had been in Lyon -- I was surprised that there were people selling them on every corner today, even in the rain. I love lily of the valley flowers and was sad that I didn't have anywhere safe to keep one if I bought it! I had expected more restaurants to be open for lunch, but the area around our apartment was kind of quiet so we went back to Fuxia where we each had an amazing smoke salmon salad with avocado and a poached egg (I don't know what it is about the French and eggs on everything) with wine. It was after 1:00 PM when we finished lunch so we went back to the apartment and picked up our bags and walked over to Place des Jacobins where there was a taxi stand. We were surprised to see that there was not a taxi at the taxi stand when we got there, but one pulled up to let some people out and we got in and were on our way to the Part-Dieu train station. The station was very busy but we didn't have to wait long for them to call our train. A very nice station employee told us that our first-class car would be all the way at the end of the platform so we started the long walk while we waited for the train to come. We had very nice seats and the train is one of the high-speed trains so we enjoyed our free wine and cookies while we read and watched the beautiful scenery go by.
We got to the Charles de Gaulle Airport train station at 4:00 PM and made our way to the free CDG airport shuttle which took us to Terminal 3 and our hotel, the Paris Hilton Charles de Gaulle Airport. Our room was ready so we dropped off our bags, got our books and went downstairs to the Executive Lounge to read and have a drink and a snack. I used their computer to try and print our Boarding Passes for our flight tomorrow but it would not let me so would have to try again in the morning. We went back to the room to sort through our bags to get them ready to leave tomorrow (no dangerous liquids) and then went down to the Lobby Bar to split a club sandwich (with another egg) and French fries.
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