England: Bristol and the second-longest day ever

We made it! (out of France, that is)

The hostel was, as most hostels are, a unique experience. It is situated a ways up the hill that my friends and I climbed the day or so before, so anytime you left the hostel you knew you'd have an uphill walk home. The bathrooms were the dirtiest of any hostel bathrooms I've seen, but they did feature a miracle of science: Apparently, water can be below freezing and still be a liquid, however this phenomenon can only be acheived in the shower.

Since I had seen most of what I wanted to see in Lyon on the previous two days, I set about yesterday in search of the statues of Lions and Bulls. Presently, there are 80 such statues scattered throughout the city as part of a special exhibition with the city of Torino, Italy. (Torino, I suspect, is the Italian word for bull, while Lyon of course is the French word for duck-billed platypus). The statues are on display in Lyon until July 7, when they will spend a month or so in Torino. My goal was to take pictures of as many of them as possible and see if I could assemble them digitally into a neat little collage that would look nice over my dresser.

To accomplish my task, I set out for the Tourism Bureau to get a map that shows the location of these statues. I then bought an all-day public transportation pass - one ticket for the subway, bus, and tram lines for only 4.50€! I didn't quite accomplish my goal, as I succumbed to what is known on the trip as Traveller's ADD:

"Okay, if I take the B line to Part-Dieu, there should be three of them in a
park to the north and - ooh, is that a crepe stand?"

I still managed to get twelve of them, and am offically an expert in Lyon public transportation.

We met at 5:00 at the church building where we were set up with a French bus company. We loaded up and headed for England, driving through the night. We passed through Paris just after sunset, and saw (from the highway) the Eiffel Tower. It was tall. When we got to the border, we waited around a while and finally drove the bus into a train car, then rode on the bus on the train car through a tunnel in the English Channel and arrived an hour later in England. We made it to the church building at about 7:30 this morning - by the way, we gained an hour this morning - where most everybody slept and was served breakfast. Personally, I was very relieved to take an actual warm shower at my host house.

They have a 14-month old boy who is bigger than Katelyn. And his granddad is a blues singer and harmonica player who takes apart his harmonicas, adjusts the reeds and other things inside, and gets a very unique, clean sound. She played one of his CD's for us, he's very good.

Coming up: Everybody sleeps and takes a shower, and maybe we will be reunited with Sladowski. Maybe.