Day 11: Metz to Yutz, France

August 1, 2015

After a good night's sleep, the four flights of stairs down from our room at the hotel looked just normal, rather than the major project it looked like yesterday. Down in the street, things were different too. Where in the night it was alive with people sitting at the outdoor tables of the various restaurants facing the cathedral, now there was more or less nothing.

The view from our hotel window. Note the towere that is not the cathedral in the distance.

Our program before heading on down the Moselle included three things. First we wanted to look inside the cathedral again. We had done that last year, but for some reason did not have much recollection of it. Next there was the electronics store. Reason, to buy yet another darn Bluetooth keyboard. No one else seems to have my bad luck with these keyboards, so maybe it's my ability to destroy them that is the issue. In this case, the backspace (delete) key is the main one that died. So it is quite conceivable that I wore it out!

The final thing was to be the covered market, which is a large U shaped building near the cathedral, stuffed with vendors of meat, cheese, bread, quiche, and similar foods of all types.

We have now seen quite a few cathedrals, but each one is impressive in its own way. This one seemed to have two main claims to fame. The first was sheer length. For this one, we would have to measure in football fields. The second was the number, square footage, and design of the stained glass. Somewhere I have a statistic on how many square metres of glass there are, but it's a lot. The windows are beautifull as well. They were created by various artists. of the past. and also more current ones. The most famous (to us) name involved was Marc Chagall. Marc Chagall died in 1985. Not sure exactly when he did these windows.

And, oh, the cathedral inside is the highest in France.

Approaching the cathedral I noticed this rather lewd strip among the many carvings on the exterior. It took Dodie to explain that in preliterate times the graphics and carving would be a way for the religion to tell its story to the masses. In this case, the good on the left are headed to heaven and the bad are headed to hell.

The comic book aspect of the cathedral carving is taken a bit to extreme, I say, with these Dr. Seuss characters.

The stained glass in this catherdral was particularly nice. This shot, and the following three are examples.

Next stop was FNAC. FNAC is the Best Buy equivalent here. Now "Best Buy" really means nothing, but at least those are words. No one here that I asked knows what FNAC means. To get to FNAC we walked though the downtown. As is common, and so great, there are few or no cars in the streets. The only ones permitted are those making deliveries. Consequently it was a great experience to walk the narrow streets looking in the stores and sharing the space wth the rest of the population.

I came out of FNAC with a decent looking keyboard for only €30. Time will tell if it works out. The question is, how much time!

The covered market was just what you would expect - lots of people and great looking foods of all types. But it was outside that we found even more vendors, and ones who were making prepared foods - like BBQ chickens, crepes, galettes, and such like. We were attracted by a Syrian man who was makiing the middle eastern specialities kibbeh, falafel, tabouleh, etc. We bought some of each! We have the former French empire to thank for this, we think, since Syria has a historic link with France.

One of the many pedestrian only streets in central :Metz

Some of the spires of the cathedral. One can only presume that they improve the communication wth God.

Inside the market, and array of well stocked vendors.

We could not try everything (or really anything much) but these dark coloured apricots were intriguing.

We noticed these breads particularly for their large size

This fish stall had a very careful and artistic arrangement of the often strange looking fish.

The Syrian vendor that provided most of our lunch.

We have to retract any comments from yesterday about the veloroute being poorly signed or having any other problem in this area. As we left town we quickly found that the signage has been dramatically upgraded, and the surface is great. There was none of the wandering on road that we encountered last year. So we now say that the route is as good here as in Germany.

At first thee was no indication, but we did find a small sign explaining that during the German occupation after 1870 there many Protestant soldiers in the town. A large church was built for them, and according to Roland, to outshine the Catholic cathedral. A fire destroyed the church, and only this tower was left. As with other German monuments (like the battle ones out in the fields) the present population neither defaced nor treasures them, and they are just left standing there. This neglected and ignored tower is like that.`

We had only gone about 6 km when we stopped to eat the stuff we had bought at the market. As it happens, the picnic table we chose was exactly one pictured in the Hillis' blog. Once again, and no doubt not for the last time, we remarked on the extreme quality of everything we had - from yogurt fermented in its little glass bottles, to the bread, and the Syrian stuff, to the fruits. It seems to us that the Europeans are continually working to improve the quality of their food - applying principles of artisanal production from unadulterated ingredients. By comparison, at home, it seems to be a game of making food with greater storage life and with attractiveness that comes from artificial falvours and colours.

Our lunch. Each item was tangy and great quality.

I mentioned this just now to Roland and Brigitte, who we are staying with tonight, and who just came back from a visit to Quebec, and they just about jumped out of their seats to denounce the junk offered as food in North America.

Last year after leaving Metz late in the day, we found ourselves in Yutz (after 43 km) with darkness falling, looking for a hotel. For some reason we had wandered in a lot of circles following various directions and leads and had found nothing. We asked a random man on the street, and it turned out to be Roland. Roland's solution to the problem was to invite us to his lovely home, where he introduced us to hs wife Brigitte and daughter Marie.

Since that time we have stayed in touch, and tried to advise Marie on good places to look for an apartment as she came to work in Montreal for a while.

So now that we are passing back through Yutz, here we are sitting with Roland and Brigitte, back in their house.

It's great for improving our French, since though Roland speaks German, there is no English in the mix. Since we have lots of subjects that we are enjoying sharing, French it is.

Of all these topics, I will choose only one to mention here: French Fries. Roland and Brigitte put together a fine supper of farm sausages cooked over a fireplace, salad, and fries. They made the fries in a deep fryer out in the garage, to avoid coating the kitchen eventually in oil. The fries were good, very good actually, but were made with frozen potatoes and fried only once. So this has me wondering, since fried from frozen potatoes back home are yucchy. I suggested that it could be the French potatoes, but they pointed out the potatoes were German. Ok then, the German potatoes. I think this is actually an important point. The exact variety of potato and the soil moisture is important to fries. One thing Brigitte was sure about, she hated Quebec fries. Too well done and too greasy. And poutine? They won't have anything to do with it.

The GPS easily found Roland and Brigitte's house. We will stay with them for one day.

Roland's BBQ arrangement. He uses whole pieces of firewood, avoiding charcoal, and of course the American standard gas for BBQ.

These fries tasted great, despite having been made in quite an ordinary way. What's the secret?

Today's ride: 36 km (22 miles)
Total: 537 km (333 miles)

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