Cruising - Nancy

One may enquire as to the relevance a photograph of a pile of fruit and vegetables that could have been taken in the produce pavilion at the Ekka in Brisbane to a day in one of our favourite towns in France.   

We realised today as we were topping up our supplies in the covered market (where the photo was taken) that we are so comfortable in Nancy after spending a good deal of time here for each of the past five years that actually have to work to see the things that tourists see.  The market is where we shop, not somewhere that we would normally take photographs as it was a few years ago.  We see nothing extraordinary in being able to choose from nine varieties of mushroom or five of radish nor in the absence of plastic wrapping.

We tend to go about our business as though we have lived here forever, no longer finding novelty the exquisitely carved art nouveau head over the teller machine, walking past the mosaic tiles to the front of the pharmacy without feeling the urge to pull out the camera.  We didn’t even walk past the Restaurant Excelsior as we normally do, simply to peer in at the diners.     We had intended to enjoy not being tourists today, to gently cruise off mid afternoon in direction Toul, probably travelling only a few kilometres till we found a shady spot, where we would lie around and sleep and just spend a lazy cruising afternoon.

But Toby and Jan arrived in port while we were having our lunch.  They seem to just bob up wherever we are: Paris, Choissey, Nancy.   It’s extraordinary that in more than seven thousand kilometres of waterway, we keep tripping over the same people over and over again, but we do, and when we do it inevitably means just as long a dinner as lunch was, and a year’s worth of conversation in a night followed by promises of finding each other again.

We have abandoned our plan.  What is the point?

We are cruising, and eating figs.