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Published: June 29th 2007
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Eliza on "her" horse
(Emma's photo) Eliza was very attached to this particular horse and was sooooo excited to get the extra ticket for a ride by herself. The big girls were so cute cheering for her each time she passed. I woke up around 7am to a very silent apartment. I stayed in bed until I heard Emma awake around 8 am. We dressed quietly and went out to the patisserie and got more chocolate chip bread sticks for breakfast. When we returned Abigail was awake, but Eliza remained asleep until 9:30!! Jonathan woke up and tried to sort out his appointment at the University of Lyon, the whole purpose of our trip and yet they hadn’t been in contact with him in weeks. It turns out that their email was down so he made arrangements via the cell phone to meet up with a colleague at 11am. The girls and I didn’t leave the apartment until almost 11 and they voted to go back to the castle playground at Bellacour. We played there for about an hour and then I took them out to a restaurant for pizza. We returned to the apartment via the farmers market where we got some serious deals because it was the end of their day. Eliza and Abigail took naps and Emma did mazes in her book and grooved to tunes on her mp3 player. When everyone woke up we went to the
toy store next door and bought a set of Legos. I have been looking for a good starter set and found one there for a reasonable price. The kids love them and have been very busy constructing zoos all day. We went back to the carousel and rode it one more time. I had one extra ticket and we all agreed to let Eliza have the last ride; she was in heaven.
It is a great feeling to be in a town and feel like you ‘know’ it. Though Lyon is huge we have our little corner of the world here and we all know it. Even Emma can navigate her way from the bridge to the hotel, to the carousel, to the patisserie. It makes a foreign place feel more like home and hopefully that is something that the kids are catching on to. It is interesting to hear them talk about “home” because sometimes it means the hotel we are in that night and other times it means our apartment in Leuven and other times they still think of Belchertown, USA, but not as often as I would have thought. It seems as though they are gaining
a sense of worldliness both in accepting their changing place within the world as well as the changing pace of the world itself.
We returned “home” and the kids played Legos while we snacked on bread and cheese and waited to find out if Jonathan would be home for dinner. By 6pm it looked like he might have made other plans so I went out and got pasta and sauce and made the kids dinner. We decided to ride the funicular to the other point on the hill, St. Just, after dinner and just as we were about to leave Jonathan walked in having been trying to get train tickets for a trip to Avignon for the last hour. He ate some leftovers and we took off. This funicular ride was a lot longer, but unfortunately the roman ruins were closed because of a Patti Smith concert tonight! We ended up walking along the top of the hill to the Fourviere point where we were yesterday and took the other funicular back down.
All in all it was a very quiet day, but I think the kids appreciated that. They really enjoyed just playing at the playground and riding the carousel. And the Legos were a big treat. They are already making plans for what they will construct tomorrow. We plan to make some plans for tomorrow and drink some wine and have a quiet night ourselves.
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