France

What's with France and their gypsies?!  We have gypsy stories too - all in France. They are everywhere like pesky gnats. Here's Bryan's encounter today: 

Just about to leave for the train station here in Lyon. I couldn't find a hostel for a second night unfortunately because it's pretty nice here. I'm going to Clermont-Ferrand for 2 nights. They have some buildings there and a dormant volcano overlooking the town so it sounds like there will be enough to do. 

I had a pretty interesting first experience of Lyon yesterday just before dad called. There were these gypsy kids hanging out by the ticket gates in the metro by the train station. When they hear the ticket machine give you change they run over and ask for it. One boy runs over to me, he's probably about 8-10 years, and tries to grab the change before I can. I reacted fast enough and grabbed both his hands with one of mine then grabbed my change with the other. When I let go he follows me to the gates pretending to punch and kick my legs, I was giving him looks. Then I put my ticket through the machine to open the gate and he tries to grab it as it comes out the other end, but I managed to beat him to it (it was a 24-hour pass ticket so I needed it still). Then I'm through the gate and I turn around to give him a cocky smile and he spit in my face. It wasn't anything nasty just a few drops but a really weird experience, he didn't say a word the whole time.  

Then as soon as I got on the metro 2 ladies got into a huge shouting match over one bumping the other with a stroller. It lasted a good 10 mins. It was awesome.

Clermont-Ferrand  from google images

 Bryan is just 4 hours south of Paris where he needs to be on Thursday morning to catch his plane home.