Day 7 in Lyon

[16 April] 

It's a big day for the two of us here in Lyon. 

We've decided to cut our trip short. 

We still plan to go to Annecy on Saturday for three nights. Then on April 22nd it's the train from Annecy via Lyon, ending up at Paris Charles de Gaulle airport for the night. We fly home on the 23rd. No visits to Colmar and Paris this go around!

After supper Tuesday evening we both felt as if this trip was somehow dragging out and we were both feeling adrift. Our conclusion was we needed to go home much sooner than originally planned. Whether it's the wisdom of aging or aging wisdom I can't say. As we planned this trip, spending multiple chunks of time in several places abroad sounded appealing -- and probably would have been once -- but at this stage of our lives much less so. We're learning about ourselves in the process. 

Life is all about learning after all. One take-away lesson is to plan shorter trips abroad for the future. For example, we're tentatively planning a trip to Portugal for next winter. On the proposed itinerary will be a week in Lisbon, a meet up with friends Richard and Pauline for several days in Porto, then return home to Michigan. 

We began the process of changing our various trip reservations, etc. at about 7:30 am when I went on to the Air France website to try and rebook. After a bit of confusion as to which airline (Delta or Air France) was responsible for making changes I found myself using Apple Messages on Air France and so began a long day's journey into night. I'll skip lots of the frustration but am happy to say that by almost 10:30 pm we were rebooked to return to the US on 23 April instead of 13 May. And at no additional cost whatsoever! 

Even though it took a lot of patience -- not my strong suit -- and we pretty much cooled our heels at home most of the day staying close to the computer, it was well worth the wait. It was raining anyway.

In the meantime, we cancelled our Colmar and Paris AirBnB accommodations and our second block of Eurail passes, all of which were fully refundable. We will especially miss the wine tasting and lunch at O chateau in Paris on May 7 which we had planned to share with two of Susan's cousins. And of course we will miss not seeing friends Val and Marie and all our old friends at Père-Lachaise Cemetery. 

I leave you with the small block of Emmental cheese that really wanted to be something else (compliments of U Express): we'll be returning this one!

Yikes!!

Tomorrow more rain predicted and so we'll relax at home thinking about the future while enjoying the present.