Sad to say goodbye to the Alps

Augutst 8th--It was hard to leave Switzerland today, but the fact that it was overcast made it a little easier. Our apartment was about 10 minutes from the train station so we walked to the train station about 9:00 for our 9:30 train ride out of Zermatt. Luckily, we got there early because the train was pretty full since that is the only way out of Zermatt. The train left out of Zermatt on time. Thank goodness because we had several train changes throughout the day and needed all trains to be on time. We changed trains in Visp. It was on this train that we went to turn on our computer and it would not come on. We weren't sure why, but went ahead and put the computer up. We arrived in Geneva with plenty of time to catch our next train ride into Lyon, France. Yes, that's right, we are back in France...couldn't stay gone long. Actually, we decided to break up our train ride from Switzerland to London with a few days in Lyon. We arrived in Lyon around 3:30 and caught a taxi to our hotel. We stayed at Hotel des Celestins. It was a traditional European hotel inside an old apartment building. Our room was on the top floor, otherwise known as the attic. It had plenty of room, but when we walked in the windows were skylights and the shades were open so it was like a sauna in the room/bathroom. We quickly turned on the air conditioner wall unit hoping that it would cool off by bedtime. It was also at this time, that we determined that Windows on our computer was corrupted. Luckily, we could still get into our files and pictures, but couldn't operate most of the programs, including the internet utility. We weren't exactly sure what to do, but knew that it was going to have to wait a couple of days, because we were moving too quickly. So without being able to get online, we walked to the Tourist Information office to get some information for our day trip tomorrow. We plan to rent a car and tour the Beaujolais wine region. From here, we headed back to the apartment to get a restaurant recommendation. The hotel suggested that we walk over to the Old Town area of Lyon. To get to this area, we walked across the pedestrian suspension bridge over the Saone River. Upon arriving in the Old Town area, there were a lot restaurants to choose from. The only problem was it was a little after 6:00 and most of them didn't start serving dinner until 7:00. Since we had 2 hungry children and a long day of traveling, we settled on Subway. After dinner, we walked back to the hotel to start winding down for bed. Since we were all in one big room, we knew it would take a little while for everyone to fall asleep. But once everybody did, we slept really good in the dark, cool room.