After the Canal
After the hype on the last day of rowing, it's almost an anticlimax on the Saturday - mostly milling around after a few 500m sprints (I avoided getting talked to getting into a boat to race this year) and then boat cleaning, and swapping emails. Lots of people asking for information on Hoea kaha for 2019 (OMG, I have to do it again?).
Mid afternoon I was dropped at the train station in Bezier to take the train to Lyon. Other years I have enjoyed Lyon, but I was so exhausted that I didn't have any more energy than required to just get to the hotel.
Hotel Athena was awful. I opened up the room and was greeted by a foul stale cigarette smell. I was tired, hadn't slept well for a few nights: suddenly I grew horns which made me not want to accept this shitty room. I told the receptionist that the room was awful and I needed him to give me another room. Huh. He gave me the key to another room. I marched down to the reception again and said (in my best french (which has improved) that it was not any better and that he needed to find another room. I was upgraded to a marginally better room. My issue was that the whole place felt like grime. They threw in a free breakfast.
Anyway, gripe over, Lyon is (as my mother will attest) a charming city. It is famed for being the first city to introduce the rent a bike system - and these people have embraced the bike concept - check out the bikes outside the hotel window.
The system with the red bikes is that you can pick a bike up anywhere in the city, cycle it to wherever and leave it a bike bay to be used by the next person. A friend and I used the bikes in Paris, just fabulous. I think they tried to introduce the system in Auckland but screwed it up by requiring the bikes to be returned to the same bay. Defeats the purpose. Lyon is a city of cyclists, the people look incredibly elegant on their bikes. Oh and the public transport system is to die for - the train station emerges onto the square - there you find bikes to take you to other parts of the city if that's your thing (and watching out of the window, it is a lot of peoples thing) or merges into the underground network which efficiently shoots you around the city. And if you need to get to the airport, there is the dedicated train for that.
As I said, Lyon this time was a passing phase only, purely to take advantage of the cheap Easyjet flight to Split. I had time to spare, and needed a coffee - and was missing a New Zealand flatwhite...
It was worth every mouthful.
Mid afternoon I was dropped at the train station in Bezier to take the train to Lyon. Other years I have enjoyed Lyon, but I was so exhausted that I didn't have any more energy than required to just get to the hotel.
Hotel Athena was awful. I opened up the room and was greeted by a foul stale cigarette smell. I was tired, hadn't slept well for a few nights: suddenly I grew horns which made me not want to accept this shitty room. I told the receptionist that the room was awful and I needed him to give me another room. Huh. He gave me the key to another room. I marched down to the reception again and said (in my best french (which has improved) that it was not any better and that he needed to find another room. I was upgraded to a marginally better room. My issue was that the whole place felt like grime. They threw in a free breakfast.
Anyway, gripe over, Lyon is (as my mother will attest) a charming city. It is famed for being the first city to introduce the rent a bike system - and these people have embraced the bike concept - check out the bikes outside the hotel window.
The system with the red bikes is that you can pick a bike up anywhere in the city, cycle it to wherever and leave it a bike bay to be used by the next person. A friend and I used the bikes in Paris, just fabulous. I think they tried to introduce the system in Auckland but screwed it up by requiring the bikes to be returned to the same bay. Defeats the purpose. Lyon is a city of cyclists, the people look incredibly elegant on their bikes. Oh and the public transport system is to die for - the train station emerges onto the square - there you find bikes to take you to other parts of the city if that's your thing (and watching out of the window, it is a lot of peoples thing) or merges into the underground network which efficiently shoots you around the city. And if you need to get to the airport, there is the dedicated train for that.
As I said, Lyon this time was a passing phase only, purely to take advantage of the cheap Easyjet flight to Split. I had time to spare, and needed a coffee - and was missing a New Zealand flatwhite...
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