Monday, 31 October, 2016. 17:56

We are in our room at the Ibis Hotel in Fribourg, after a drive from Lyon. We’re waiting until about 18:30 before we go out to meet Jason at his place to go out for dinner together.

We got up at a bit past 07:00 this morning, and had a leisurely morning since we didn’t really want to do much other than get breakfast, check out of the hotel, and pick up our hire car at midday. M. wanted to try the Slake Coffee House for breakfast, which opened at 08:00. I did some stretches to ease muscles tired from yesterday’s walking, then got dressed in time for us to head out.

Unfortunately, a handwritten sign on the door of Slake said they weren’t opening until 09:00! Since that was a bit of a wait, we walked the short distance over to Grand Café des Négociants to have the continental breakfast there again. This time it was clearly open, with several people already inside having coffee and croissants and so on. The woman who’d served us yesterday wasn’t there, but the supervisor lady was and recognised us. We ordered the same combinations as yesterday, except M. chose a pain au chocolat instead of a croissant. This time the jams included a peach one, but no raspberry. And the waiter brought two glasses of orange juice before stopping and realising M. had asked for the lemon.

Slake Coffeehouse

After breakfast, we returned to our room briefly to pick up our iPads, and then went over to Slake to get a coffee for M. It was open by the time we got there, with a few people inside. We sat at a table near the front of the cafe, and I wrote some of yesterday’s diary while M. read a book on her iPad. The decorations were a bit funky, with the lampshade above us being a wire cage with perches inside it and fake birds sitting on them. There was also a seat for two people made from an old claw bathtub with one side removed. All the furniture was unique and mismatched.

Read more: Getting a hire car, driving across France, lunch in a small town, Switzerland, burgers for dinner

Sunday, 30 October, 2016. 14:56

We’re sitting in a cafe called Cafe Florio, in Vieux Lyon, the old part of town, having a drink break after a busy morning of sightseeing. M. is having a cafe creme, while I’m having a refreshing weissbier.

We slept reasonably well, waking up almost on the dot of 06:00, which after the clock change meant a good eight hours of sleep. M. slept through, but I woke up a few times. As we got up and prepared to go out, I checked for nearby cafes where we could get breakfast. Most of them either weren’t open on Sunday, or only opened at 10 or 11 o’clock, but there was one not far away which opened at 7, called Grand Café des Négociants.

Rugged up in our coats, we headed our just before 07:00. The weather was cold and grey, and it had rained overnight, but it wasn’t raining as we walked. But when we arrived at the cafe at 07:00, they were still cleaning inside and hadn’t taken the chairs down off the tables. So we had to wait a while until they were ready to open, so we wandered a block or two in various directions to look in the windows of some fancy shops while we waited. Eventually, they looked like they were open and we tried the door, which let us into an interior decorated in the last century, with chandeliers and velvet and silver everywhere. There was a large bar, with a huge ice bucket with bottles of champagne, and some enormous glass vases with flower displays that went up to the ceiling. The place had indeed been in business since 1846.

Breakfast at Café des Négociants

We sat at a couple of small round tables, both of us in the bench sofa by the window, and ordered the continental petit dejeuner, which consisted of a croissant and two large slices of bread each, plus a hot drink, a fruit juice, and jams and butter for the bread. We both ordered the chocolat chaud for the hot drink, and I got orange juice while M. chose lemon, which came with a decanter of water and sugar to sweeten to taste. The continental breakfast was really the only choice – they also had a breakfast with cooked eggs and other things, but they didn’t start serving that until 09:00.

Read more: Exploring Vieux Lyon, the Cathedral Saint-Jean, Basilique Notre Dame de Fourvière, and yummy food

Saturday, 29 October, 2016. 13:26 Sydney time

We’re sitting on board our first flight, from Sydney to Dubai. It’s a daylight flight all the way, and we took off at 06:00, so we’re mostly awake despite trying to get a bit of sleep at the beginning.

We had to get up at 03:00 this morning to have a quick breakfast and then catch a taxi to the airport. It had rained overnight, but it had stopped so we didn’t have to wait on the kerb for the taxi in the rain, although it started sprinkling as the taxi arrived, and got quite heavy while we were driving. It eased off a bit by the time we got to the airport, so we didn’t get too wet getting out.

There was a short queue of passengers at the Emirates check in, so it didn’t take long to check our bags and get boarding passes. The woman at the counter asked if we preferred a row next to a window or in the middle of the aisles, and said the plane was fairly empty, so we could have a whole row of seats to ourselves and stretch out. I asked if there were any exit row seats available and she said no, but there was a bulkhead row, so we got that. Then it was filling in our departure cards and going through immigration and security into the departure area.

Nothing was open when we went through. No duty free shops, no food places, nothing except a lone McDonalds, where a few people were getting coffee. Our plane was the first scheduled departure of the morning, right on 06:00 when the airport curfew lifted, then the next departure was 06:30, and then no more until 08:15. So given our flight is only about a quarter full, there was virtually no business for anyone opening this early. As we waited, a couple of places opened around 04:30, a small duty free shop and a newsagent.

We boarded not long after 05:00, and the plane left the gate early. As we walked on, we checked our seat numbers, which were 43A and B. So naturally we started walking down towards the back of the plane, thinking the seats were several rows back. But when we looked at the seat numbers we were passing, they were already up in the 50s, so we had to backtrack, against the flow of other passengers. When we reached our seats, they were the the very first row, right by the entrance door! I guess rows 1 to 42 are upstairs, this being an Airbus A380. From where we’re sitting we have a view into the cockpit whenever a crew member opens the door to go in or out.

They served a breakfast soon after take off, and I got the potato and tomato frittata so M. could mix and match, swapping parts of her vegetarian meal with mine. (The other option was scrambled eggs with sausage.) Then we dozed a bit, since we’d only had a few hours sleep before getting up to go to the airport. But after a while we started waking up. M. watched movies while I tried to do the latest crossword in my weekly challenge with the guys at work, before I gave up and started writing this diary.

Flying over Australia

Read more: Arriving in Lyon and finding some dinner