Extreme Pavements

The Montée de la Grande Côte does what it says on the tin and leads you in a rather straight and steep route up the side of the hill to the Croix Rousse plateau. A plaque at the bottom helpfully informs us that it used to have a huge sewer running down the middle of it when it was the major route up the hill to the silk weaving district but, be reassured, it has been tarted up a lot since then and has even got funky new pavements.

In the seventies there was a great uproar when several Medival and Renaissance buildings were deemed beyond repair and pulled down. This area (near the top) has been made into a park area, with views down the hill. However the demolition sparked a major restoration project both on the Croix Rousse hill and in Vieux Lyon and this eventually led to the designation of a UNESCO world heritage site in 1998.
Nowadays you can see wonderful architecture as you go up and down a pedestrianized street, there are a couple of bars and cafes, as well as plenty of boutiques and workshops that help reflect the history of the area. On a weekend, red faced and slightly sweaty tourists plod up the hill, in fact it is so steep that there are parts of it that are staircases and other parts that have steps cut into the pavement.

It was one of these sections that caused me soooo much pain today.

There I was innocently going to work at 6.50 in the morning, when I noticed the street cleaners were washing the pavement with gallons of water. Being aware of this I slowed my pace, not wanting to slip in the rivers of water washing down the hill. I reached a relatively dry bit and needed to take a road on the left, observed a stream of water and thought to myself 'Avoid that bit, it will be slippy' but somehow still ended up on my arse anyway.

So a scream alerted the 2 cleaners and a passing pedestrian that I was on my bum and in a tiny bit of discomfort and they came over to assist.
When asked if I was ok, I said that my knee and foot were hurting. I rolled up my jeans and showed an impressive cut on my knee and one of them said 'C'est vrai.' If I hadn't have been in so much pain, this would have annoyed me. Did he really think that I had artfully arranged the contents of handbag across the pavement, then sat millimeters from a stream of running water, sprinkled water on my jeans and then cried out as I was some sort of Munchausens suffer?
One of the cleaners then cheerfully informed that lots of people had slipped on these new paving stones but the Ville de Lyon was not replacing them as it was 'Trop cher'. I eventually made it down the hill and into work.
Then the adrenaline wore off and my back started aching, combined with the fact that the swelling on my knee kept on swelling and the realization that it was very difficult to bend over and place a baby in his cot, made me acknowledge that I had done some serious damage.

This being France it counts as an 'accident de travail' (as i was on my way to work), so everyone has been buzzing around trying to make sure that I'm ok. The Dr gave me a truckload of medicine (including one that may make me vomit blood), an appointment for an xray and a prescription for the physio to give me back massages.
I was fortunate enough to get an appointment tonight with the physio who made me twist and turn and basically inflict torture on me before she relented and gave me a back massage. She after reminding me to breathe as she worked on the more painful bits and watching me struggle to get off the couch, she remarked that the muscles in my back were tender. Why else did she think I was there??

So, my advice for today, if you're going to slip on a pavement, do it on your way to work, but be prepared for people stating the bloody obvious.