I cannot believe that on our last night in Salzburg (Monday) that I sat and watched the movie " Dirty Dancing" that the dialogue was dubbed in Austrian, but at least the music was in english.

Woke up to a rainy Tuesday morning and the day was going to be a long one, we left Salzburg heading to Innsbruck and on to Zurich, the scenery was amazing as we were doing a gradual climb up through the mountains and it got even better as we started through the swiss alps, even though the clouds were down we could still see the snow on top of the mountains, pretty dam awesome, it is was hard to realise how high up the mountains the train was travelling until you looked on the other side and saw all the houses down in the valley's below, and we also noticed with the water in the river, had changed colour from the mirky brown to a clean green blue colour, arriving in Zurich we had to change trains and this was weird, as we had the sniffer dog go through the cabins, and then further down the track 3 policeman got on and ambled through the carriages, and there is even more, further down the track another 3 policeman (different uniforms) walked through the train, from Zurich we headed towards Basal and Dijon where we had to change trains again, the only problem with this is that you just can't get off a train and walk over to another platform, you have to race down to the main concourse of the station and find the screens that give you the platform number that your train is leaving on and then sprint to that platform, I have worked out "blast that" I head straight for the first information booth and show the ticket and they tell me what platform,

Finally arriving in Lyon around 6:00pm we head straight for the ticketing office as we needed to make sure we could get on the first fast train for Barcelona on Friday, mission accomplished we headed for our hotel,

Now before I mention the hotel, what a surprise we got with the Lyon station, it is dirty and a lot of homeless people seem to hang around there. Over to the hotel, check in and we just had a funny feeling about it, once in the room although fairly clean it smelt, Chrissy couldn't connect to WiFi and I found there was no shower to speak of and no hot water, after Chrissy had a visit to reception and met a very unpleasant lady behind the counter we decided OK we will stay the night and check out in the morning,

headed out to find something for dinner and although there were a few places around nothing really appealed to us, but finally settled on one, Chrissy ordered Carbonara and a coke and I ordered a chicken curry dish, with a latte also, I got a chicken curry that they must have started cooking ten days ago, it was goddam bloody awful, and the coffee came out as hot chocolate, Chrissy's coke came out as iced coffee, something definately got lost in the translation.

Wednesday

Checked out of the hotel and the Mercure was right next door so we booked in there, dropped our bags and out the door, and walked and walked, ( no this time we were going in the right direction as the reception girl pointed us the right way) found the hop on hop off bus and did a complete circuit of the town, on the second turn we got of on the top of the hill overlooking Lyon at a church called Our lady of Fourviere Basilica, and once again truly beautiful, I couldn't believe how well the paintings on the walls and ceilings had lasted until I got up close and they are all competed in extremely small mosiac tiles, truly amazing, back on the bus and down the hill, we finally got off the bus and had a walk around finally stopping for coffee and then back to the hotel.

lyon is an old town built around two river systems, the Saone and the Rhone that run through the middle of the city, apparently a lot of river trade and production of silk kept the town going, We have noticed a lot of homeless people on the streets here and they all seem to have dogs, not just one but a couple or three, I can't work that out,

We have one more day left in Lyon and have really nothing planned just a quiet relaxing day.