Early start to Winter

We are settling into our life in Nancy. There always seems to be something to do or see. For retired old folk we always seem to be busy. We walked through Place Stanislas en route to somewhere recently and there was an amazing display of gardens and vegetables. Set up with an autumn festival mood, the theme was produce from vegetable gardens surrounding the stories of the fabled giant Gargantua of 16^th century stories.

The Square had been transformed into large gardens, a number of vegetable patches and some amazing produce.

And with a little freelance sculpture.

A little history: After the war of the Polish Succession in 1737, the deposed King, Stanislaw Leszcznski was given the Duchy of Upper Lorraine. Nancy was the capital of the Duchy and he made it his home. He designed an extension to the old town that included palaces and official buildings that all exist today. The Place Stanislas, lined with these beautiful buildings, fountains and wonderful wrought iron gates has been placed on the list of UNESCO world heritage sites.

The square is locally known as Place Stan - Stan Square.

The town was the centre of the Art Nouveau movement in Europe at the start of the 20^th century and we still delight in coming across buildings in this style.

We found this lovely little one in a back street.

A beautiful example of the wrought iron and glass of the time.

Nancy has its fair share of modern buildings too. This example of France’s modern architecture is taking shape close to us on the port.

The weather is getting colder and we had two steres of firewood delivered to Matilda. Unfortunately, this year we moored outboard of another barge which meant that about a ton and a half of timber had to be manhandled into its storage space on board.

We also fitted our new coach house covers giving it a loose equivalent of double glazing and protection for the varnish..

Winter is coming and we woke up to a covering of snow on Thursday morning. The double coach house covers are most effective.

It will get colder so the fire will be working hard now. We are traveling back to Australia for Christmas and it should be much warmer there.

There will be more to tell so, we will keep in touch.