it's what you make of it

And so we're back in France, this time with a larger travel party. The first stop for the majority of us was the city of Lyon, which came highly recommended. As our train pulled in, the sky was that interesting shade of purple that precedes a storm. Of course, we had a substantial walk ahead of us to our accommodation, and of course, the rain came down.

No matter what someone else's experience of a place is, you can often arrive to find that it's drab, lifeless, an altogether unattractive place. I won't say this was our experience of Lyon, though we certainly didn't feel any magic as we shuffled our way through the rain to our 'budget hotel', in a district riddled with kebab shops and stores specialising in cheap bollywood-inspired fashion.

Yet in the days to come, Lyon would remind us of a vital point: travel is entirely what you make of it. When we actually ventured forth from our hotel room, crossed the river, and hunted out a restraunt to have lunch, we discovered a side to the city that we might never have, had we simply taken our first impression of the city and withdrawn from it.

Of course the best made plans often fall in a colossal heap, as they did with our lunch: we arrived in the restaurant district about twenty minutes after every restaurant stopped serving lunch. At two o'clock! What nonsense, there are places back home still serving breakfast at this hour! In any case, we were directed to one of the few places which might still feed us, 100 metres up the road. After a few more additional hundred metres, we found it, and enjoyed an enormous luncheon. Incapable of going far, we dragged ourselves to a nearby park and reclined on the grass, as Lyon opened up around us.

The weather had a lot to do with it, we were blessed with glorious sunshine. And we'd stumbled on quite a location. As the afternoon wore on, the park and paved plaza attracted all manner of youth with wheeled devices - bikes, skateboards, unicycles... the sort of riff-raff that often get such a bad rap for their disrespect of civic property.

Yet there was no sign of vandalism here. There was one statue with a sloping base that they often did ride up and down, yet it seemed to be enduring without any sign of wear. All in all it was quite a spectacle. Groups of people came and went, and Klaus went and got taught the fundamentals of doing backflips. Later, we'd walk home along the river, where it seemed the entire city had flocked to enjoy the afternoon.

We might not have seen this side of the city, and that would have been a real shame. So we'll have to remember that it's really up to us to seek out the good bits wherever we go.