On Monday, a sleep in our bed until 9am was definitely a good way to start the day and recharge some inner batteries, actually I can’t believe we really did sleep for 10 ½ hours. This resulted in a rather late breakfast, which we ate outside, though with a chill in the air I could do with getting the Ugg boots out again. We spent the rest of the morning slothing about and doing some catch-up email replies, then caught the bus in to the centre of Nancy. I’m not sure what happened to our mental state, but we both hit the shops straight away. Rodney now has a lovely pair of suede shoes and a new Desiguel polo shirt. And I have a black padded gilet and a jolly flowered wrap cardigan. All purchases were at least 40% off; we love a bargain, but the stupidity of this was that we then had to shuffle around Nancy with a bundle of bags in hand. We bought a couple of slices of quiche for lunch and ate them sitting on a bench in Place Stanislas, watching life go by; well one has to have quiche when in Lorraine…….
We didn’t catch the bus back to the campsite until after 6:30pm and decided to go back in to Nancy again today.
Nancy is rather a nice, relaxed city with a public transport system that puts Sydney to shame. It feels very French with its wide boulevards and lots of squares and parks, even an Arc de Triomphe, and the architecture is really varied. Today we wandered around the older areas of the city (without bags of shopping in hand) and had a lovely formula fix prix three course lunch at Le Bistrot de Gilles for only €13.50.
Suitably stuffed, we wandered further south. I was keen to see the Art Nouveau examples of buildings, but we’ve struggled to find many really good examples that we could photograph. So tomorrow, before driving north we may pop back in to Nancy to visit the Art Nouveau museum.
We finished today’s trip with the purchase of a half price pair of soft tan leather shoes for me….look, the sales here are brilliant and there are so many lovely things and a little retail therapy has to be good for the soul. Back at the campsite, after all the walking, I treated my feet to a nice soak and a pedicure, while Rodney played nosey parker. He loves watching all the campers arriving and watching them get their tents up, or move their caravans in to place. He peeks at other campervans, even the size of their toilet cassettes and makes mental notes of good points or bad points and he stares in disbelief at the huge campervans; they must only use the motorways, they couldn’t get down some of the roads we have used…..!
It’s now nearly 9pm and we’re still sitting outside drinking cups of tea and watching the sun get lower in the sky. Let’s see if I can get some wi-fi going again, to log this entry and then aim for another early night before tomorrow’s travels.
Dang !!! We never had any R & R with the girls in Nancy, we didn’t know they were there…..We’ll look for them next time.
I remember thinking that Nancy was a strange name for a town when I heard it mentioned in the Clint Eastwood WWII movie “Kelly’s Heroes”. They were trying to get there to have some R&R with the girls. 🙂
BTW, if you haven’t seen “Kelly’s Heroes” I highly recommend it.