A wander through parts of France, Spain and Italy to find that perfect location, location, location . . .
Step one, a month in Lyon.
The sun was shining brightly as these two weary travellers unloaded their bags from the taxi outside 24 rue Lanterne, on a medieval thoroughfare whereon blood flowed freely from the many ‘boucheries’ of yesteryear till it gentrified and became the home of famous goldsmiths, painters and surgeons, and finally the site of the Hot Club de Lyon, France’s first gallery devoted entirely to jazz, right next door at no.26. Greeted at the door by our new host, we entered our new temporary home within a noble 17th century building, with its tall, heavy, wooden front door, two steps up from the ‘rez du chaussee’, and after climbing some 150 steps upwards we arrived at the tiny garret we knew only as “Les Toits de Lyon”, a miniscule penthouse with 360 degree panoramic views across the rooftops of Old Lyon that we would call home for the next four weeks.
At long last all the planning, the despair, the frustration, the excitement of travelling again, that we had gone through since this wonderful idea had come into our heads so many weeks and months ago, had come to fruition as our half-year long sejour in Europe began with time to explore at our leisure, Lyon, France’s second city and self-styled gourmet capital. Variously frustrated by, tired of, bored with, Californian life Long Beach style, we had formulated a campaign to see as many as possible of those parts of France, and hopefully also a sampling of Italy and Spain, that we believed might offer us the ideal location to put down new roots sometime in the not-too-distant future. Not having any great desire to experience quite the same cold and damp climates of our Polish and English birthplaces, whilst still wanting to benefit once again from the vagaries of four distinct meteorological seasons, we had set our sights on a narrow band across the south of France from Provence-Alpes to Pyrenees-Atlantique, with the hope of possible detours eastwards into the Italian Riviera and south-westerly into the Basque Region of Spain. But first we needed to acclimatize ourselves to ‘la vie francaise’, and a relaxing month in this beautiful city looked like it would do the job perfectly.