Tuesday, April 28, 2015

We were still not sleeping well, so we were up plenty early to have Mike go out and get us some rolls from the friendly man at the Bar down the street and cappuccino and tea from the restaurant downstairs  before having to head out for the train station to catch our 10:15 AM train to Chambery Challes, France.  It was still raining out so we had the hotel call a taxi for the short drive to the train station.  Our train was right on time and we had nice First Class seats to relax and read for the 2 hour journey, arriving at Chambery Challes at 12:50 PM.  Mike bought a nice Panini sandwich from the Bar down the street from our hotel when he bought our breakfast rolls so we enjoyed our sandwich along with some complimentary wine and cookies we got from the bar car that came with our First Class tickets.  Our train from Chambery Challes to Lyon did not leave until 13:44 PM so we walked to the Bar across the street and Mike had a beer while we waited.  The train from Chambery Challes to Lyon was an old kind of run-down little commuter train but it wasn't very crowded and the trip to Lyon Part Dieu Station was only a little over an hour long.

We got a taxi from the train station to our residence hotel, Citadines Presquile Lyon.  I knew that parts of the hotel were being remodeled but we were surprised to see that the entire lobby was covered with plastic with the front desk sitting in the middle of all that chaos!  We checked in and given the key to our nice one bedroom apartment, No. 501.  We had to wait quite awhile for the one elevator that was working and unpacked a little before heading out to find the supermarket listed in the helpful little booklet in the apartment from Citadines.  We bought some water, wine, beer, orange juice (from Florida!), pistachio nuts and paper towels and took them back to the apartment.  We then went in search of some place to get a drink and found that the pedestrian-only street right behind the Citadines was full of restaurants and bars!  We picked Fuxia at 5 Rue de la Monnaie which was an Italian restaurant.  Mike ordered a Pinot Grigio Rose (which I had never heard of) for me and a beer for him when the couple sitting at the table behind him asked if that was an American accent they were hearing.  They were from North Carolina but were originally from San Francisco so we had a nice conversation with them while we ate the complimentary olives and pickled cherry tomatoes.  We went back to our apartment to finish unpacking before going back to Fuxia for dinner.  We both ordered scaloppini limone and a bottle of white wine.  The scaloppini was good, but it tasted like it was in orange juice not lemon juice -- who knows with the French?