Thursday May 20, 2004

I woke up at 8:30 again. I had baguette and jam for breakfast, Sarah had yogurt, a peach and some strawberries. Sarah was feeling quite sick to her stomach, so we decided to take the day off from sight seeing. We had a nap until 11:30 then left the hotel and took the Metro to Gare de Lyon. Once there, we found out roughly where our train would be departing from. We'll be leaving at 19:14 for Besancon, which is a city of 120,000 in the southern half of France. We'll be taking the high speed train, arriving at about 10:00PM. We'll then have to find somewhere to sleep for the night. Sarah's stomach is still quite upset, but she's feeling a little better. We're lying in a park just outside Guard de Lyon, it's pretty nice.

We went for lunch on the other side of the Seine. We ate at a mediocre Chinese restaurant. It was actually kind of nice to not eat baguette and cheese. We then stayed in a garden "Jardin de Plantes" for a while.

It was too busy, so we retreated back to the Gare de Lyon side of the Seine and hung out in our little park again. We were there from about 3:30 until 6:00, at which point we [will/did] head slowly back to Guard De Lyon.

Okay, catching the train ended out being a bit of a fiasco. There was some debate about which car we were supposed to be in. As a result, we had to rush from one end of the train to another. It wasn't our fault, honest! Leave it to a pair of Canadians to successfully quash the myth that European trains always run on time.

Once we get to Bescanson, we plan to tour Friday and leave Saturday night for Turin on an overnight couchette.

On the ride over, we met a nice student from New York. He was studying at the university in Besancon. He suggested a few places to go in the city and assured us that it was a very safe place. His ringing endorsement really made us feel a lot better about our choice to visit Besancon.

We arrived in Besancon at about 10:00PM. We took a photo with our new friend and parted ways. We started the trek into the city not really knowing where we were, where we were staying, let alone where we were going. Sarah used a calling card to reserve a spot in a local hotel recommended by our travel guide. We walked down a large hill into town. The city was surrounded by rivers by three sides, with a large fortress, the citadel, sitting atop a hill on the south side. As we approached the river, we crossed at the closest bridge. After some slight confusion resulting in a moonlit tour of Besancon, we arrived at the Hotel de Levant at 10:50PM. The hotel was above a restaurant, which was closing as we arrived. The innkeeper was the picture of a stereotypical innkeeper/brothel madame. She was large, she was French, she was friendly. The room cost us $33 Euros, quite fair considering it had a shower, sink and most of a toilet. One strange thing to note is that she charged us a 66 cent "tax." As of the 24th in Italy, it remains the only time we have paid any kind of tax. Oddly, she didn't charge us this mystery tax for the second night we stayed.

The room was small but clean. the keys used to get into the room and building were worth the price alone. They were huge, brass skeleton keys that looked very hold and worn. I wanted to take one back with us as a souvenir, but the woman was too nice to us.

We unpacked a bit and went to bed, exhausted as usual.

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