Fall 2019 Day One

The travel days are always the tough ones. We had a great start, leaving from Traverse City. That was a delight!  Very easy, well organized and a great plane and great seats. We got to Chicago and had about 2 and a half hours to kill so we ate some yummy food and explored. Then we boarded our plane. It was small by our normal standards for our overseas flights, and our plane seemed newer with a nice new entertainment system at the seat. But, it also was the smallest tightest seats I’ve ever experienced. It reminded me of Spirit Air!  There was absolutely no leg room, I could barely even reach down to get my underseat bag. I felt pretty claustrophobic the whole time, which is something I’ve never felt before. But, we made it!  Right on time to Paris!  We felt like we had to hurry because we had a train to catch at the train station in the airport to get to Lyon, our starting point this year.  But, like every time we have ever flown American Airlines internationally, customs was like 5 minutes so we made it to our train with time to spare, only to find out there had been an accident involving a person on the train tracks and the trains were all either cancelled or delayed for hours!  Fortunately, ours was delayed not cancelled, but we did have to wait for 3 hours for our train to leave!  That made for a LONG day!  But we finally made it to Lyon!  We hopped on the metro, took it to another line and then to the center of town where our Airbnb is. Learning to use the metro system anywhere you go makes life so much easier. You can get anywhere and you feel like you belong in the city because you’re with all the locals!  First of all, we LOVE our Airbnb. It’s so small yet well laid out!  Everything we could possibly need in one tiny room with a loft and some really high ceilings. Check out the poorly made video of it. It’s really cute!  Secondly, Lyon is charming!  We have only been here for like 5 hours at this point, but it sure does look amazing on a foggy drizzling evening. We are staying right in the center of the town a block off Place Bellecourt, the main square. But we are a block away from Pont Bonaparte, the main bridge that takes you across the Saone river to Vieux Lyon, or Old town. It’s beautiful!  Tomorrow we plan on touring all over Vieux Lyon. They have these cool things called Treboules. They are secret passages that lead from one street to another that you only find if you’re in the know, supposedly. WE ARE!! 😜 they were originally created for the silk industry, so the workers could take their fabric from place to place without it getting wet. But they came in real handy in World War II when Lyon was one of the centers of Nazi resistance in France. I can’t wait to see some of these passages and show all of you all about them. Anyway, we went to a really great restaurant for dinner that our hostess of our Airbnb recommended. It was called 5inq Mains. Pronounced like Cinq. It is a very small place, which we love, but boy are they putting out some great food!!  First, they gave us an Amuse Bouche of sting ray meat in a beet purée. I’m not a fish person and I don’t like beets that much, so I was VERY skeptical, but it was absolutely delicious!  Tasted like sweet crab meat in a yummy sauce. Surprisingly great!  We ordered a wine from the region, a Syrah that was lighter than most I’ve had and went perfectly with our food. It was fruity and yummy and not as heavy as most Syrah I’ve had. We shared our meals, as usual, and had a house made cracker with all sorts of stuff on it, like Parma ham, fig purée, mushrooms, and a chestnut mousse or something like that. It honestly, didn’t sound that interesting to me, but it looked amazing and it tasted great too. The other appetizer was a celery soup with a soft boiled egg in it and some foamy stuff in it. Not sure exactly what we were tasting but it was yummy!!!  For our main dishes we had venison for one of them and duck confit for the other. Both had lots of yummy sauces and vegetable purées. They were both amazing. Then for dessert we had a cinnamon streusel with a citrus ice cream and chocolate ganach. Emily and I are not huge fans of citrus and chocolate and our minds weren’t changed although it was good, not great. The other dessert was a plum cliafoutis which was good also but not great. The rest of the meal was definitely the showstoppers on this night. We walked back and showered and are now in bed ready to end this LONG DAY!!  Enjoy day one of the blog and be ready. Lots more to come!!!  Let the adventures begin!!!!!