Finding our place

I have never driven in Europe and I foolishly only knew that we needed to head southeast to get to Lyon. My dad had suggested skirting Paris to the east, but that was about as much preparation as I had made. I had read a quick tutorial on french rules of the road and street signs, so we struck out in our 6-speed manual diesel minivan for Lyon. Right away, I am pleasantly surprised to find the highway signs are very clear and we can just keep following directions to Lyon, basically driving on auto-pilot. Instead of just one city ("Sacramento") on the highway signs, they list the top three you might be headed towards. The other thing I found interesting was the law that if you can move to the right, you must. Even when there are three lanes of traffic, you will get flashed in the middle lane if there is space on the right. The upshot is that everyone is changing lanes all the time. The other result was that vastly different speeds are possible even when there are only two lanes. You never get stuck behind a slow driver. This is pretty cool! I really like driving in France.

We arrived in Lyon around 8pm on a dark and rainy night. Our address is on Lacassagne Avenue and the directions we had been given seemed a bit vague: "It's a big street right by the train station. Follow the signs to "Gare Part Dieu" and you'll find it." Again, following white directional arrows which point to areas of interest we quickly find the train station. This is easy, I love driving in France! Now all we have to do is find Lacassagne Ave.

French street signs still follow the quaint custom pioneered by Napoleon of being written on the sides of buildings. On a plaque about 6 inches square will be the words "Rue de la Republique" which has to be written in a tiny font to fit. This hasn't been too much a of problem for us in the past because we were on foot and could walk up to the building to read it. Also the streets change names every three blocks, so it can take a while to find on the map. The good part is then you are pretty darn certain where you are even if you can't find a plaque on a side street. For some reason every city and town has a Rue Victor Hugo too. There must be a law. Hurtling through traffic on a dark, rainy night down one-way streets is not the ideal way to navigate a new city in France. We can't read any of the street signs, there are also one-way lanes going the reverse direction sometimes, but these are only for buses as well as walled off lanes reserved for buses and tram track that we have to avoid and occasionally find ourselves on. There is no grid here, in fact I think through a marvel of geometry there are no two parallel streets. The whole city feels like market street in San Francisco. After some futile circling of the station we buy a detailed road map and find Lacassagne. There is no way in hell we would have found our way there on our own, plus it is one-way and we need to be near the beginning of it. Even with the map we have a hard time getting there. We block a bus, stop at a green light, make illegal turns in roundabouts, and the whole time we are not honked once. My estimation of the Lyonnais goes up. Still, our dialogue in the car is like this:

Make a left on the next street you can.
I don't think we can for the next 10 miles.
Well go right on Rue Encombe Vineuse.
Which one is that?
I don't know, where are we? Rue Something-or-other I can't read the sign.
Well park and ask.
Judging from the age of the cars, nobody has found an open spot since the Germans left.

My love for driving in France has waned. A little over an HOUR after finding the train station we make it to the apartment garage and check in. The receptionist has waited for us and is very nice, she has our keys and even some mail for us. We decide to leave the bags in the car and get some much deserved dinner. Dinner is wonderful and now we remember why we came here.

Lyon is regarded as the capital of french cuisine (even the Parisians give it the nod) which of course, since french food is the best in the world, also makes it the best place in the world to eat. If you don't believe me, ask any Frenchman. So, even if things don't go well during the day, our Lyon meals make up for it at night. If somebody asks where we live we can now tell them - about a 10 minute walk from the train station or an hour if you want to drive.