Day 40: meeting strangers

Our hostel is half way up the hill that overlooks the city- ferviere it's called. We have a great view of the city from our window but it is a very misty morning so not much is visible. The church below - st jean looks eerie in the grey fog but it's very beautiful inside. The city is divided by two rivers into new town and old town. We are in old town. We hike across the river and up another hill to find one of the markets. It's much colder up here. But we resist the temptation of sitting in a restaurant for lunch and instead buy a rotating roast chicken, avocado and a baguette from the market. We sit in the park, tear our chicken apart and create delicious rolls with our hands. Lucky for the invention of wet wipes. By his point we are really freakin cold so we decide to head to "Lyon's legendary indoor market". It didn't look too far away on the map I swear... The indoor market is another food market which we didn't know but it's indoors so we sit and the girls drink an entire chalice of peppermint tea out of shot glasses with a side of mini macaroons. I'm feeling a bit worse for wear at this stage so whilst the others head to a shipping centre I head home back through the fresh pretty Lyon streets and back up the dreaded St jean hill to our hostel for epic nap time. This served me well and by 7pm we were out having dinner at an apparently very recommended and good French restaurant. I ordered black pudding otherwise known as the insides of a pig in a sausage form served with apple... It was very black looking but it tasted very good. We made friends with an English lecturer who travels around Europe and Asia guest lecturing technology of behavior. When he was kicked off his table we invited him to join us and had very academic conversations over two bottles of wine. Once he left the restaurant the table next to us of about 20 people wanted to practice their English and speak to the token Aussies too. Not enough of us to go around. Through pictionary and symbols they were able to tell us where and how to order frogs legs. After the restaurant we headed next door to the Irish pub because Madrid and Barcelona were playing- the 2 top teams. Again our English conversation drew attention and more of the French wanted to speak with us. This was unexpected because all we've heard is that most French people are snobby and rude and won't have a bar of it if you don't speak French. But the times they are a changin'.