On our way back to the campground, we were waiting for the bus when a little French boy heard us. He asked if we were English and was very excited to hear that we come from Les Etats Unis. His school had just begun to teach the children English this year, and he says he loves it. All the time we were at the bus stop and all the way until we got off the bus, he questioned us carefully about our life in America. We were both impressed by his command of English – and when we left, we told him to try to e-mail us. How wonderful to be speaking another language while you still have the facility of youth.
2008 Wednesday Letter: First "job" this morning was to use the WI FI facility at a hamburger chain named "Quick" since the McDonalds in town didn’t offer this service. We got there earlier than they opened, and the staff told us to use the WI FI on the picnic tables outside. Which we did. We were there a long time – and Adelle suggested we buy our lunch there…so Ron went in to check it out. A plain hamburger was 4 euros 50 - which at the current rate of exchange was approximately $7.00. That is much too much for a fast food hamburger in a world of delicious baguettes.
We had walked the few blocks to this place, so we retraced our steps, ate lunch in the RV, and went into town. First stop was the cathedral – a beauty, of course. We didn’t stay too long because they were closing the building (from 12 to 2, n’est-ce pas? We walked to the one museum that didn’t close for lunch. It was quite a long way, but it gave us the chance to see more of the old buildings.
Our German informant had said this was a unique place, and he was correct. A local priest had spent his life collecting an cataloguing tools, mostly from the 17th and 18th century, many from professions which have mostly disappeared. The displays were, as Ron said, "artful" as well as interesting, and they gave us an explanation of the exhibits in English to take along. This was a huge collection – numbing, exhausting and extensive. When we finished, we were both tired. But we pushed on.
The other museum turned out to be much less exhausting. In the first place, they had a movie about the bonnetiers of Troyes, all in French. Didn’t matter to us. We needed to rest and we got the sense of most of the film. Incidentally, bonnetiers don’t make hats, they make socks and other kinds of things that require machines that make circular cloths. There were all kinds of old machines on exhibit, as well as a collection of socks and stockings, mostly dating from the last ten years of the 1800’s up to 1910. It was interesting. Continued........
