Monday, July 10, 2017

France: Lyon Arrival and Finding Heaven

Traveling Hits and Misses
As blog titles go, this one is rather elusive. How do you sum up two days of travel to get to Lyon France from the northern climes of Canada? Stupid is a word that comes to mind. Daft. Unreasonable. Exhausting. Mind meld.

The trouble with living so far north, flights are limited and airlines are limited. We have two choices: WestJet or Air Canada. The ordeal of travel comes from me having a bright idea of some place fun to go. Then, we book airline seats in good faith and pay arms, legs and mortgages to pay for them (not really, but it sure feels like it.). This is after watching for seat sales that are for the rest of Canada, but not us. So, in the end, we have the privilege of waking at 3:15 am. to head for the airport for a 6:00 am flight.

We landed at 7:15 into Edmonton and wandered through the airport to find a place to curl up. Fortunately, this airport has comfortable curved benches that were perfect for miserable teens to sleep on. Five hours later, snacking and shopping our way through the time, we get the awesome news that close to boarding, our flight will be delayed for an hour plus for routine maintenance. Don’t worry, they are rebooking people as needed. Question: how can they not know that this routine maintenance needs to be done and why was it not scheduled properly? We were fortunately that our flight from Montreal to Lyon was also delayed so we had no trouble running to the gate. We left at 10:00 (it was delayed) to fly to FRANCE.

Lyon, for the traveller, and a jet-lagged traveler to boot, was a wonderful experience. We landed, and deplaned smoothly. Customs was small and simple. The airport had a shuttle to the rental cars that was easy to find. We had landed and found our car within 1.5 hours and were on the road with EuropeCar. First note: France has toll roads. Second note: they take credit cards for payment so not to worry if you haven’t found currency yet. I was excited to see the sunflowers in bloom just outside the car rental depot. 

Our final resting place of this two day travel was Bourg D’Oisan. Sat Nav (GPS for the North Americans) doesn’t not know this place. So, we drove towards Grenoble (did I mention grumpy teens?) where we had to get out to find food.

Grenoble is stunning. It settles into the river valley with beautiful buildings and sweeping mountains. We found Pizza everywhere so settled on pizza for lunch at Pizzeria de Vieux Quartiers. Trust me, every restaurant seemed to be a wee pizza place along this strip of the river. The pizza was authentic and delicious. We also managed to find a patisserie to get breakfast for the morning so armed with a baguette, croissants and pain au chocolat, we headed for the car.

The girls were finally girls again and not being awful, so instead of driving on, we opted to go up the Bubbles. The Bubbles are the funky gondola that take you up to the Bastille. It is possible to walk up but the sweltering muggy heat and jet-lag made that option not viable. We road the bubbles for 7 minutes and found ourselves at a nifty historical adventure. We walked to the caves and explored them. It was lovely and cool. From the caves, we saw the contemporary art exhibition, had ice creams and enjoyed the view. This was about a two hour stop altogether before we bubbled down and walked through the gardens and back to the car.

Our destination was still nowhere to be found on Sat Nav, so we set it for Alp D’Huez and drove on. The mountains in this part of the Alps are stunning. We weaved our way through the mountain valley and finally arrived at destinations sent to us by Melanie, our land lady for the week.


Thanks to Home Away website, we are staying at Ferme Noemie in Le Sable in the Middle Barn. This place is incredible. We have the middle barn apartment which sleeps five people comfortably. It has two bedrooms upstairs and on the main floor is has an open concept living room kitchen and bathroom. Balconies on either side allow access to the mountain views. I will let the images speak for themselves. It was heaven to fall asleep here and wake up with the sun streaming in the windows. Altogether, we are up and about to go adventuring. 

 Ferme Noemie




 Grenoble





























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