Lyon and the French Alpes

On Tuesday morning, the three of us checked out of the Sofitel Hotel at Heathrow Airport and conveniently walked over to Terminal 5 to catch our flight to Lyon. This all went fairly smoothly, however finding a taxi with a baby seat on arrival in Lyon was far more difficult. So we bundled all our luggage into a taxi who's driver promised he would drive carefully with Matthew on Heather's lap! 40 minutes later we arrived at the apartment of Helen Bailey, a friend from orienteering in Perth who is doing a 2 year stint in Lyon working on Child Cancer research. Although Helen's apartment was on the third floor, there was thankfully a lift to get all our luggage up. So we made ourselves comfortable in Helen's lounge for the next three days while trying to keep cool (no aircon here!). By this stage, Heather had come down fairly heavily with her flu/virus so we took it very easy while she tried to recovered.

All we did on Wednesday was walk down to the local food markets to buy some chicken, vegies and cheese for the next couple of days. It was still very hot and muggy (no breeze), so Heather rested for the remainder of the day before cooking up a great stirfry that night.

On Thursday it was still very hot but at least we had some rain in the morning to cool it down a bit. Heather's cough was getting quite bad so she had a doctor's appointment and had some different antibiotics prescribed. That afternoon Matthew and myself decided it was time to get out an look at a bit of Lyon and give Heather a chance to have a sleep, so we walked over the river to Old Lyon (not far from Helen's apartment) and caught the funicular railway to the top of the hill where there was the Basilica overlooking Lyon - a great view. We took a windy path back down to the river (great fun in a pram!) which was really nice through trees and gardens and also offered some respite from the hot weather. By evening Heather was feeling a little better so all four of us headed out to a Bouchon (a local Lyon type of restaurant) which we had seen on the way back from the doctor for dinner. We chose a fantastic 3 course menul and the manager even convinced Heather to order the tongue for main... it was tasty and tender and worth the experience. A very rich meal, topped off by a complementay shot of some fiery alcohol from the manager.  Who knows, this might have been the perfect thing to kill off Heather's lurgy and cough, had she indulged!!

 

By Friday it was time to head off to the French Alpes and some cooler weather. The problem at this stage was that lift at Helen's apartment was no longer working so we (i.e. Adrian) had to lug all our luggage down the spiral staircase instead - 80 steps in all. Very hot hard work indeed! We caught a taxi to a train station where we had booked our hire car and by 10am were on the Autostrade heading towards Grenoble. Three hours later we were in the beautiful French Alpes at the ski resort of Les Deux Alpes which in summer is teaming with downhill mountain bikers and families. We had a hotel room for our three nights, which included breakfast and dinner courtesy of Aussie Chef, Ryan. Needless to say, the meals were amazing and he even catered to Heather's wheat-free requirements. The hotel was less than half full as it was getting towards the end of school holidays when all the chairlifts shut.

Saturday involved a familair routine - off to the doctor again!! Matthew's cough was quite bad by now so we had an appointment with Dr Bernard who had red/white checkered glasses which Matthew thought were so funny! He was fairly certain Matthew did not have whooping cough and prescribed some different anti-biotics. Our other concern was that Matthew hadn't been feeding too well and had actually lost weight, so fingers crossed that he is heading in the right direction.

On Sunday it was time to start having a real French holiday so we found a nice relaxing cafe to have a cafe au lait and chai latte during the morning, whilst doing washing at the laundromat next door. Matthew loved it and chatted to the other patrons at the cafe - getting very excited when meeting children especially. That afternoon I decided I was well enough for a walk up the mountain to enjoy some of the views given it was a glorious sunny day. There is a track which goes from the town up to the summer skiing glacier, about 13kms with a 1,500m climb. It was a great walk although quite cold towards the top - thermals and beanie were adorned to stay warm. My only problem was the 4pm closing time of the lift back down to Les Deux Alpes, so I pushed myself quite hard to get there in time so that I didn't have to walk all the way down again. I stepped onto the the lift at 3.55pm - whew! What became evident that evening was that I was no where near as well as I thought I was and headed off to bed early during dinner (lamb shanks, would you believe) to recuperate. But it was still a great walk, as you can see by the photo attached.

Our last day at Les Deux Alpes involved another visit to the doctor - this time for Heather and I to have bloodtests first thing in the morning, to try and discover what this lurgy was that was hampering our holiday. Heather was still quite sick so ended up having a consultation as well, ending up going onto new antibiotics and steriods for the cough.  Fingers crossed, things start to improve soon for her and Matthew.  Then it was back to the hotel for a quick breakfast before packing up our bags to leave this beautiful mountainous area and head south to the warmth of Provence.

By the way, Matthew is now sporting two bottom teeth, and making great use of them, often sinking them into Mummy and Daddy!