France Day 1: Food and the Quest for MiFi
[Written 15 AUGUST 2014. It’s dark outside before midnight!]
We have a travel rule which states “after a strenuous day there shall be a quiet day”. Since traveling is strenuous, the first full day in Lyon, France was mostly quiet. Well, we tried anyway.
We desperately needed to buy groceries, so that was the first order of business. We started out by visiting the local ‘organic’ store, just to see what it looked like, and sure enough it was very organic-y, as in mostly expensive dried goods, some dairy, and fruits – which meant we needed to visit a second store to actually buy what we needed.
The organic store was close to the local shopping street though, so we parked there to begin our attempts at getting mobile internet (MiFi) so that the phone GPS maps would work. First we had to eat lunch, and I floored the kids by knowing a bit of a totally foreign language (to them). Yay for trudging through French for four years in junior college!
After buying an internet card for the MiFi gadget, we headed to the big local food store. It was called Monoprix, and we were totally saved by one very helpful attendant who gave us tokens to free the shopping carts, because we had zero coins on us.
Once we got back to the house, Emma napped and the big kids got computer time.
After a bit of hanging out later that afternoon we foolishly left the house without any maps or guidance or working internet (our mobile internet gadget didn’t work! boohoo!) but somehow made our way to a fancy shopping district downtown-ish where we had dinner. We walked around for a bit afterwards, mostly by the river Rhone.
(It would turn out a couple of days later that a) our mobile internet gadget needed a firmware update to work with the French cards, and b) our rental car had GPS navigation built in all along. Yeah.) (21 images total)
At the place where we had lunch, and the server spoke no English. Emma’s asking for some pepper in her hand.
Anna holding both Emma and Bjarki on the local shopping street, named Avenue des Frères Lumière.
The Monoprix grocery store was inside a bigger Galeries Lafayette, which sells clothes and stuff. The kids had fun on the escalators.
Bjarki and Emma playing after Emma’s nap.
Emma and Finnur enjoying the back yard.
Well, hello there Sun! We haven’t seen much of you this summer.
The cat of the house made an appearance, and hung out with us for a bit.
Emma testing the swing in the corner. Fancy photo effect courtesy of Google.
Bjarki the magician.
Emma trying out the grass.
Late in the afternoon, we drove straight west and ended up in a fancy shopping district by the river Rhone. We soon discovered above ground parking was almost hopeless, so we dove into a parking garage. The French get huge kudos for numbering all the parking slots!
Eating dinner. Bjarki was emotionally exhausted after the stress of us driving somewhere without a map, and without a clear goal in mind besides ‘find an interesting area, find parking, find a restaurant’. The food was mostly above average.
Hrefna attempting to take a photo of the street and the restaurant.
Photo by Anna. Notice the big church up on the hill behind us? We went there a few days later.
Here be impressive buildings.
Bjarki not quite feeling the ‘touristy vibe’.
Smile!
And now we know the french word for ‘ape’.
By the river Rhône. Bjarki kept asking what would happen if we fell in.
Pretty bridges everywhere!
Emma still going strong. Iceland is two hours ahead of France in the summer time, so Emma was good to go far into the evening.
All in all it was a successful first day, except for the MiFi problems.