As the generous L² made us breakfast in bed this morning, our planned breakfast meal of smoked salmon bagels got shunted ahead to lunch.

“I propose that we take the lunch, get on our bicycles, and go for a picnic,” said Lisa.

“Yes!”, I replied.

We cycled out Riverside Drive to Murchison Lane, turned right, went past the Queen Elizabeth Hospital to the grounds of Hillsborough Hospital, where we set up our picnic on the beach, fortuitously at low tide. Downtown-to-picnic was a pleasant 14 minute bicycle ride, mostly on separated multi-use trails. It was the perfect distance for a first-time-bicycle-picnic.

The beach at Hillsborough Hospital is covered with bricks; if memory serves, G. told me these come primarily from Falconwood, the original home to the hospital (a building you can see on the cover of Beyond the Asylum: The Evolution of Mental Health Care in Prince Edward Island 1846-2017, by Tina Pranger)

Many of the bricks were inscribed with the name of the brickyard; we pieces together one partial brick with “BATHVI”:

…with another inscribed “VILLE”:

…and thus surmised these were bricks from the Bathville Brick and Fire Clay Works in Scotland. Bricks that came a long way, stood as part of a building for a long time, and have now survived, still readable, all these years on the beach. Amazing.

Jeremy Cherfas writes about a sesame inanity.

Day two on my bicycle for 2023. A late start. It’s like flying. Flying.

We didn’t plan to visit Lyon on our trip to France: technically this was because we had a “no revisiting places one or the other of us has already been” (with an exception for Paris). Lisa had passed through Lyon on the train at one point, so it got ruled out. 

But Lyon was halfway between Skinny Home and Tiny Home, so it made for a logical waypoint between the two. And so we went. And we liked it so much that we went back again on the swing back to Paris.

Both Lisa and I felt immediately comfortable in Lyon: our Uber driver, Jonathan, was an excellent ambassador for the city, and in a 20 minute ride from the train station to our apartment he gave us a short course in the city. 

Our other ambassador was my friend Dan Misener.

In 2012 Dan and his partner Jenna spent a year in Lyon, a posting announced here:

So, why France? Why Lyon?

First off, we’re moving to France to learn French. Right now, my French isn’t great, but it’s halfway passable. I can order food and get directions, but I’m can’t have deep conversations about philosophy and literature. Jenna’s French is much better than mine, but we could both stand to improve. We figure immersion will help, and where better to immerse ourselves?

We chose Lyon for a few reasons. First, because it’s not Paris, and thus, we can afford to live there. It’s the third largest city in France, and feels not too big, and not too small. Plus, it’s la capitale gastronomique française, so chances are we’ll eat well.

Lyon is decently well-connected to other parts of Europe by rail and air, and we’re really hoping it’ll be a good home base for a bit of travel.

As someone with a quiet I-want-to-live-in-Europe-for-a-time obsession, I was an enthusiastic reader of Dan’s blog posts from there onward about Lyon, and so once we got settled I emailed him for advice about where and what in the city; he quickly responded with a well-hyperlinked guide that included a coffee place, thus earning him a place in my Pantheon of most helpful friends.

I resolved to revisit Dan’s writings about Lyon upon my return, but the current stripped-down-to-basics state of Misener.org made gathering them all together a challenge, so for posterity and personal reference I present the posts here:

• .ca -> .fr
• Buying travel medical insurance
• Vendredi XIII
• The joy of setting up a French bank account
• My real-life experience using CanadianForex
• A very fussy morning coffee ritual
• All-you-can-watch movies
• Transatlanticism

There’s a lot unwritten about Dan and Jenna’s year in Lyon; it’s just those 8 posts. But the spirit they set off in continues to resonate:

The past few years of my life have become very comfortable. The same city. The same apartment. The same job. There’s nothing wrong with comfortable, of course, but increasingly, I feel the need to shake things up. To do something that makes me feel uncomfortable. To get outside of the ordinary.

Words to live by.

Lisa took a lot of photos of me in front of green doors. 

Curious flagging tape on the Camp Tamawaby Demonstration Woodlot Trail in Grand River.

“Well, I just really like Kerri Russell…”

“I haven’t seen her in forever… what was she in?

“Felicity!”

—

“I think I’m gonna be back here this afternoon with my regular. Catch you later…”

—

“Well, we do get strike pay!”

Breakfast on the newly-refinished table.

In her post Quackers, Thelma writes about her encounters with a duck, beginning:

Flapping sounds coming from a chimney usually means trouble for both the flapper and the homeowner.

That’s as good an opening sentence as I’ve read in a long while.

We had a household debrief after returning from two weeks in France, and here is our advice to our future selves about travel:

• Don’t check bags. 
• Don’t take neck pillows.
• When taking backpacks, make sure they can somehow connect to roller suitcases.
• Take fewer clothes.
• Don’t take bulky one-fine-dining-experience-only shoes; take flats instead.
• Don’t clothes shop before going, clothes shop once there.
• Take sunscreen (although European sunscreen is very good).
• One shared toothpaste is okay. 
• It’s okay — and feels like lovely magic — to take an Uber to/from airport, no matter the moral purity of figuring out transit.
• Always buy multi date transit tickets in any city: even if it doesn’t make financial sense, the convenience is priceless. 
• Getting local SIM cards in advance is worth the effort, and makes assuming European life on arrival more seamless.
• A 5 hour layover in Toronto or Montreal on return is a long slog; the ideal, to minimize waiting but minimize rushing, would be 90-120 minutes.
• Don’t eat the second meal on the return flight, save that for layover dining.