Jeudi le 5 mars- Back to France!

Our last morning here – didn’t do much really.

The girla got a Henna tattoo each on their arm.

Got a phone call to say the man would come and collect our bags at 12:00 and bring them to reception. So we spent a bit of time getting organised. At 12:00 headed up to reception where got our wristbands cut off – this now meant we couldn’t have lunch or anything! This annoyed me as it did say that our time at the complex officially finishes after lunch and we were not going to get anything till the plane at about 6:30! However the girls had not come with us and we had to find them to get their wristbands to hand in – so we went slow and had a couple more drinks before we took them up to get cut off.
I think we could probably have still gone to the restaurants but I am too honest, Paul (the Pom) reckoned all the other French people would have been in there anyway regardless, this would probably be true. The French don’t really care for rules and are pretty arrogant.
We headed out of the complex and ate at a local restaurant – Hermione a hamburger and chips $5 and the rest of us got pizzas at $8. Not too bad.
The Thomas Cook rep arrived at 2:30 to collect us to take us to the airport. After we gathered a few more from different hotels we arrived at the airport just after 3:00. Amazingly now everyone collected their own luggage, even thought there were men hanging around hoping to get tips for doing this. We are all so much the wiser!
Through customs control and Xrays to check in counter. We were second in the line and there were 3 different queues – however ours was the only one working and then amazingly enough the rude French from the other queues just took down the ropes and barged in turning the queue sideways running along the counter and before 5 seconds was up we were at the back!
This is so typical and very irritating – they would never think to go to the back, just barge right on in.
Duty free was hardly a saving so no purchases. Boarded the plane and took off at 5:30pm.
I drew the short straw and was to sit on my own across the aisle, amazingly though I had a great seat and had all this leg room. I enjoyed talking to the couple beside me who regularly go to Agadir – 10th time. We did get a very nice tea on the flight which surprised us.

We watched the reverse this time - day turn into night and saw a glorious sunset.

We arrived in Lyon at 9:30pm and then managed to find our way to the Airport Shuttle counter – he had just closed but he informed us that you buy your ticket from the driver and they do accept credit cards. The next bus was leaving in 5 minutes.
We raced to the shuttle stand, stowed all our luggage and the girls got on and found seats while we waited to pay. Finally our turn and the driver said “No cartes” - I explained that the man inside said yes you take cards and even the sign on the bus said it accepts cards – he was very rude and said ‘No’.
A bit shocked at how rude he was another passenger explained that we would have to go to the cash machine in the terminal on the first floor, but we didn’t have time. The driver was ready to leave and was about to take off when I tried to explain that our children and luggage was on the bus! He at least waitied, although very impatiently for us to get them off!
I was slightly concerned as it was now after 10 and we needed to get to the Gare to catch the metro to our hotel and I wasn’t sure what time the trains stopped running! Nor if there was even another shuttle bus.
I went up to the first floor and took a few minutes to find the cash machine, when I returned the rest were all sitting on a shuttle – whew! But…Seph was in tears. It turned out in the panic to get them off the other bus she had left behind her handbag and it contained her souvenirs and all her ‘littlest pet shops’.
I explained to the driver what had happened and he was great, he rang the other driver and left a message. After about 10 minutes the other driver called back to say he had the bag! Relief! Another few minutes passed and he called again to ask where we were getting off as he would meet us there to return the bag. Very nice of him but Nev thinks he was feeling very guilty about how he had been so rude to us. The next driver though made up for him and was really nice to us and to the girls.
We waited at the shuttle stop for the bus to come back with the bag and in the mean time a very drunk lady started talking to us in English, it turns out that she owns a vineyard and winery near Dijon and she invited us numerous times to come and stay with her. She was on her way to the airport to go to Egypt – but there were no more shuttles that night – we were on the last one!
Nev spotted the other shuttle and went to meet him as he got stuck in traffic – turns out he was still really rude to Nev but at least we had the bag. He had in fact got stuck in a little turn around as a car blocked it and there was no driver in it…this probably added to his grumpiness, I call it Karma!
We left our dear drunk new best friend, I tried to talk her into getting a taxi as not sure what she was planning to do but she didn’t want to. The police had driven past a couple of times to check on her I just hoped she was ok after we left. In her words. “I am pretty sloshed, been drinking like a fish!”
We made it to the metro it was about 11:00pm and then 2 changes and a short stroll we finally arrived at our accommodation at 11:40. Whew!