What a difference a day makes

The difference between Monday and Tuesday, and it's not what it usually is. Yesterday morning, I woke up in Lyon, France. It was, admittedly, a filthy disgusting hole of a place (I have the mozzie bites up my arms to prove it), but it was holiday, it was away, and it was New Years Day - public holiday! I'd been travelling since the 23rd, seeing exotic locations I'd never been to before. I had cramps in my calf muscles from all the climbing. For anyone unfamilliar with Lyon - hich will probably be most people, I admit - most of the city is beautifully flat, stretching between the Rhone and the Saone rivers. This was not the part that our hostel was in. Behind the heart of the old town, a steep slope climbs its way up towards an eleborate church. Halfway up this slope, there are roman ruins. There are great views over the whole of the city from the top, assuming pedestrians survive the climb to the top which leaves fit healthy teenagers (who had the nerve to laugh at their red faced elders) panting for breath half way up when said red faced elders went past them at a steady pace. And shortly after that half way point was the entrance to the mankiest hostel in France. The home of the cold shower in a cupboard, of rooms with no sound proofing whatsoever, of breakfast served without any reference to such luxuries as plates. There's no other reason for me to complain about Lyon though. And even the hostel had its good points. Their names were Rick and Martin, and they were from New Zealand. Nice boys, and their friend Josie, who told us about a park that kept us busy for a few hours. Who would have thought 2 adults could have so much fun on a little kids train? One of them also provided the inspiration for our hours of trekking around Lyon, waiting for a crowd to gather near the ferris wheel for the countdown to midnight. It doesn't matter that there was no official countdown. We had fun. And so did the french men who kept trying to talk to us until our preoccupation with (and squeals of delight over) fireworks proved too much for our limited french to overcome.

And then there was today. After a Christmas in Paris, climbing a fog-shrouded Eiffel Tower, a couple of days seeing the beautiful sights of Geneva, and a luxurious couple of days by the Mediterranean in Toulon, it was an understandable shock to the system to find myself back at work this morning. I wasn't the only one though. Apparently, it was the biggest sick day on record in London. I'm sure they were all at home clinging blindly to the memory of the sun they saw on thier break. I know I was having vivid flashbacks to Toulon, and the luxury of going without not only thermals, but scarf, gloves and hat as well.

Mind you, I was also incredibly glad when I woke this morning to find that I had my own room to myself again. After the succession of increasingly batty room mates between Paris and Geneva, the solitude was almost divine, in a way that none of the tourist infested churches I visited in my travels could manage. From the Australian whose voice had an uncanny similarity to tha of Kath Day-Knight, of Kath and Kim fame, to the Turkish woman who had found her way to Switzerland, ostensibly for medical treatment, and carried her worldy goods to the toilet with her every fifteen minutes or so, or even the lovely American girls who checked into our hostel room at the sensible time of 4am on New Years Day, we've had it all. Lucky for us, the sights were so beautiful, and the people we met away from our rooms so lovely to us, that the trip was a dream.

But for all that, it felt like it never happened within about 2 minutes of stepping out the front door this morning. My empty bag might reproach me from it's resting place in front of my wardrobe, my photos might scream at me from the camera to be uploaded onto my computer, but the holiday already seems so long ago that I can barely muster the energy. And so the countdown to the next trip begins. A day ago? A lifetime more like.