Euro scavenger hunt...

Our time in Barcelonette could not have been more perfect. Our tutor's name was Pasquale and we learned more from her in 3 days than we did in 3 weeks at the farm. It was also very important to her that we enjoy her town. She took us to the local dance concert, out for drinks with her friends and arranged for us to go kick boarding through the rapids (seriously). Picture doing white water rapids on a boogie board...safety first. Everyone in town hung out at the restaurant outside our hotel. People would sit and drink for hours and everyone would come by and say hello to Pasquale during our lessons. We were sad to say goodbye to her and the town.  Saturday we headed to Lyon. It's possible that the combination of a bus ride on windy roads and Mediterranean heat (sans ac) made us both a little nauseous and a little  irritable. Luckily, after the bus we got to take 2 more trains without air conditioning, and I went through a very un-dramatic "I-might-die" moment. Finally, we got to our hostel...only to discover that we were, in fact, still in Europe and thus still in an ac free zone... In Lyon, we decided to keep our balcony doors wide open overnight to get some air flowing. We both woke up in the middle of the night to a massive thunderstorm and rain pouring into the room (luckily I had been a generous wife and given Trey the side of the bed next to the window). The rain did not let up until we left Lyon this morning- and I mean 7-second thunders and torrential downpour all the time.  We prepared for the 40 degree temperature swing with rain jackets and sweatshirts and headed out to see as much of Lyon as possible in 12 hours. We ended the night in a packed Irish pub to watch the Euro Cup. It was the perfect way to see the game and we even sat next to a group of Spanish girls (who were pretty happy with a 4-0 win)  This morning we had our very own Amazing Race experience. There is a really cool story about John Snyder's grandfather that I won't take the time to explain now, but it's awesome. Very short version is that Grandpa Snyder was in a battle in 1944 that liberated Perouge, France. He signed a guest book in a tiny medieval town that in '96 President Clinton also signed (on the same page). So our mission was to go to this tiny village, find the hotel and take a picture of the guest book pages.  We only had a few hours layover between trains and the village was an hour hike from our station. The hike was gorgeous and the town was completely unbelievable (they actually used the village as the setting for the movie 3 Musketeers and it definitely didn't need any embellishing for the movie).  Unfortunately only family members are allowed to see the book so we might have told a slight fib to get to see it. An old man with shaking hands brought out his "golden book" (which was actually green) and proudly showed us the signatures of Fred Snyder and Bill Clinton.  The man was 10 in 1944 but he seemed to have a perfect memory of the events. He got teary eyed talking about what a great man Fred Snyder was and he brought out his military photo and treated us to wine and dessert. He would have happily talked to us all day but we were cutting it close to make our hike to the train in time. We gratefully said our goodbyes and sprinted down the mountain (full packs on) and made our train with 4 minutes to spare.  Not a bad little European scavenger hunt.