Day 66,  Thursday, November 2, 2023

When travelling for such a long time it is essential to schedule in some down days.  Today was one of those.  We drove to a big grocery store to replenish our supplies, did a couple loads of laundry, researched and planned activities for our stay here in Lyon, and worked on the blog…I seem to be forever playing catch up with my posts!  It is also cold, wet and windy so it is a good day to stay home.

Our apartment is on the sixth floor of an older building on the outskirts of Lyon.  On the way to Lyon we were commenting on how great it was that there was an elevator…but when we arrived last night we discover that it was out of order!  Yesterday was All Saint’s Day, which is a French National holiday, so there were no repairs scheduled until today.  Last night we only took up the bare essentials with the hope that the elevator would be repaired today.  We were lucky and by mid afternoon it was once again in working order.

Our hosts are an older couple who took great pride in explaining everything we needed to know about the apartment. They only spoke French and I was pleased that I was able to understand and respond in French.  All that Duolingo online French is paying off!

We had a very frightening experience last night.  In the dark last night we drove past the gate to the apartment complex and had to turn around so we could get back to the gate.  Bob put his signal light on and just as he started to turn left a young man on a standing electric scooter came flying down the hill past us.  He swerved and barely missed hitting us…literally by inches.  He was going very fast and he was out of sight in seconds.  It  really shook us up.  If he would have hit us it would have been an awful accident.  What an idiot!  He was dressed all in black, had no lights, was going way too fast, and he was very lucky he wasn’t seriously hurt or killed.