Lyon:
On our last night in Paris, After a lovely home cooked meal of meat pasta in meat sauce with chilli (my creation naturally) which cost 1.76 Euro a piece we got some shuteye, leaving the next morning for Lyon on a TGV train. They put Cityrail to shame. I'll take cruising at 300km/h through the scenic French countryside over rattling at 50 with views of Wollstonecraft.
I'm starting to notice when doors sound like things that aren't doors. On the TGV the bathroom door sounded like a Tuba, with one note as it opened and another as it closed. At the hostel in Paris the barhroom door sounded like that squeeky noise dolphins make, and most impressive of all, our door in Santorini sounded like a car slamming on it's breaks and skidding, about to crash. We flinched every time we heard it. So listen carefully to your door. It might have a story to tell you...
When we arrived in Lyon, second biggest city in France, and found barely anyone in the streets we knew something wasn't right. Turns out we chose to travel in the three weeks of the year all good travel guides say never, under any circumstances, to go to Lyon. In the first three weeks of August everyone is away on holiday and everything is closed, but when life gives you lemons you make lemonade, so we turned our four days in Lyon into fun-filled adventure. We spent many a day wandering the old city with its awesome candy and chocolate store, millions of French restaurants, and a medieval store which managed to stock the original Excalliber!? And for only 100 Euro. What a steal.
By night we dined at authentic French restaurants, ordering mysterious dishes with a glass of wine and cheese in authentic French style. One restaurant had the most bizarre and un-classy toilet ever, requiring you to squat over a hole, and turn on an overhead shower to clean yourself afterwards. Thankfully no squatting was required that fateful day.
After dinner we would spend the night either on a quest to find an open pub, or at the 'soirees' put on by our hostel to sell beer. What made the nightlife though was the people we met, for example the group of underage French binge-drinkers, one of which (who they told us is an academic prodigy) shouted "oh my god" and then spat on the floor every 5 seconds or so, told us we were his brothers for life and kept nagging us until we gave in and agreed to play another game of 'shee-foo-mee' or something like that, the French word for scissor-paper-rock.
So all in all we took some bad circumstances and made the best of it, getting our gourmet on all the while. By the way, I now officially get my steak rare. :)