So, Emma, our friend Ara, and I decided to venture out and try
something new. We decided to go couchsurfing. For those of you who have never
heard of couchsurfing, it is basically like Airbnb except it is free. How? You
may say. Well, nice people open up their couches for you to stay on completely
for free! The greater idea is that it is a cultural exchange. You make them
a meal or teach them a skill and they will show you their city. It is really a foreign concept for Americans because I think we
inherently avoid all situations in which we could possibly be “attacked or
murdered." I feel like we have greater fear of situations like this. As my dad says, you don’t ever stay with someone you don’t know or
get in a car with someone you don’t know, they’ll kill you. Perhaps a little extreme but still a fear that exists.
But, when I am in
France, I don’t have that same fear. I use Blablacar all the time (a car
sharing website that’s very popular in France but also exists in other European
countries) and my couchsurfing experience proved to me that it is my favorite
way to travel!
If you're looking for the websites, here they are. I highly recommend Blablacar (I've used it all the time). And Couchsurfing as well, although it's for the more brave-hearted (and you need to be safe and choose people others have reviewed as well as traveling with a least one friend).
For this trip, we decided to do an excursion up through Lyon, Annecy and
into Switzerland. Originally we were going to go back to Toulon through the
German part of Switzerland and then head through Italy, thus making a circle. But the funds ran out so
we ended up going Lyon to Annecy to Switzerland back to Lyon and then to
Toulon.
So our first stop was Lyon!! My favorite city in the world!
So many lovely memories I hold there. It’s kind of like your first love: the
first place you lived abroad. I will always love Lyon in a special way.
Anyways, we took the train up to Lyon and ended up booking a couchsurfing place with these
two guys Will and Martin. They were so sweet. Will gave up his room so that
we could sleep in it, which is like the opposite thing from couchsurfing. That
first night we didn’t really know how it worked so we were awkward and talked
with them a long time because we felt it rude not to, and then went to bed.
The next day we went for a walk in the Parc de la Tête d’Or
(and Ara saw his first bear! They don’t have those in Australia apparently) and
then I went for lunch at Bernadette’s! I stayed there for a few hours just
hanging out and loving it. Wishing I could still live with them!
I met up with my friends again and we went to Vieux Lyon and
checked out some of the traboules. That was really fun because I hadn’t done a
lot of the ones we did! IF you want more information about traboules (secret
passageways that exist in Lyon), here's a link to wikipedia. I think I wrote about them somewhere back in the Lyon times but I'm not sure. Traboule: Wikipedia
We wandered around the city, went up to Fourvière, ate croque monsieurs, had fancy coffee, saw inside the Palais de Justice, stayed up
late playing board games and chatting with Will and Martin, went to Martin’s
choir concert in a bar in Place Carnot, wandered by my old host family’s house
and made Marguerite wave down at us, and walked along the Rhône at night.
It was a short two day trip but fun. We also had the chance to meet Tristan, the sweetest of guys. He lives in Lyon and Ara met him through social media. He showed us around the city. He knew all of the history and was basically our special tour guide. My favorite part of traveling is meeting new people!
