Interestingly enough, there was a high school student protest going on, but unfortunately I only caught the tail end of the TV news report, so will have to research the issues. France is known for its protests and strikes.
When we first arrived in France from the UK, we had to rearrange our route to Paris because of a train strike. Once we tried to leave Paris, the results of that strike were that the trains we wanted were booked solid. We could only catch a late train to a transfer town, arriving in Lyon at midnight.
Since there were no more trains leaving that night, we went to find the hostel. The bus that we missed (the last one of the evening) departed at 12:15 am from the other side of the bus zone. Here, I have to take issue with the directions that were posted on my otherwise reliable hostelling site. No, the hostel is not just 3 km from the train station—really, it *has* to be at least 5 km for how long it took us to walk there. No, the hostel is not at the bottom of a hill—it’s halfway up one. A steep one. If I’d know how far and how steep that last bit was going to be, I may have paid the money for a taxi. Instead, we figured we could do 3 km—we have before—it’s only about 2 miles. We can do that in one hour with all our things. Right. We arrived at 2:30am. The hostel people were very friendly, and we didn’t have to disturb anyone in our room: we were given a small dorm that was just to ourselves.
The next day, however, there was no problem getting to Grenoble, and surprisingly, the scheduled bus to Alpe d’Huez hadn’t left yet, so we were able to get right on it for our trip into the Alps and up the 21 hairpins to the town.
This is a beautiful place. I will post photos soon!
On Tuesday, we head to Avignon to meet up with my French penpal, Hélène. We will be staying with her for the holidays.
Best of the holidays to all of you!
Darlene and Xena (Samantha)
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