| From: "Bron Gondwana" <brong@brong.net> Date: Mon, 28 Oct 2002 23:45:23 +1100 (EST) |
Those of you who have been tracking the change in dates may remember we were originally supposed to fly to Rome on this day. Guess we were a no-show for Ryanair then. Checked out and left our bags at the hostel. Caught the bus out to CERN (the number has changed since our Lonely Planet was published, but at least the old bus number doesn't exist any more, so we knew we had to work out the correct line to catch). There was a guy who looked so much like the typical physicist that we decided he must be one - and he didn't get off until the CERN stop, which is a dead giveaway if you ask me. The exhibition was fantastic - heaps of educational displays for younger kids, and bits of old equipment for us to look at. There was also a presentation on the current plans for extending their particle accelerator. They're re-using the old tunnels and just putting in new equipment - the basic idea is that they only have to run experiments for a few years to learn everything they can with each set of equipment - then they replace it with something else to collect new data. We were early for the train - which was lucky, because they actually have customs in the train station for the trains to France. Of course our train finished at the wrong station in Lyon, and we had to find our way to the hotel (luckily the metro system is excellent). It was raining heavily, but the hotel is right next to a metro station. The station is in Ampere square, which had a very wet statue of Ampere (who the unit of electrical current is named after). The room in the hotel was very simple. There was a toilet down the corridor, but the showers were downstairs, and cost an additional EUR 2.50 to use. We were very annoyed at that, because this place was listed in the backpacking guide (hostelsofeurope.com) and had obviously done the separate charge to look cheaper. Grr. Went to a chinese restaurant for dinner. Food was good, but despite non-smoking signs on the walls, nobody paid any attention to them. I guess that's understandable when they had an ashtray on every single table, even in the non-smoking areas. |
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