Not bread alone. Commercy to Sampigny

There’s something mildly comforting about waking in the morning already looking forward to lunch.    

With that mild comfort in mind, we strode off through the streets of Commercy post breakfast, following the tourist trail, past Stanislas’ favourite home, the church, the place where the abattoir once stood, taking a wide berth around the shop selling Madeleines lest we once again fall into its clutches, and into the bakery where we bought yesterday’s perfect baguette.  At least we would have walked into the bakery had it been open today, but it wasn’t.  Not on Tuesdays when we are in town apparently.

“Best baguette ever” was the way one of us described yesterday’s fare.  Nothing else was going to compare. Our lunch plan was if not in tatters, at least a little ragged at the edges.

We did find a near if not quite perfect impersonation of yesterday’s baguette, in another bakery which also sported a rather large range of pastries the likes of some we had never seen before.    Normally we are quite disciplined about such displays.  We have a rule that usually allows the purchase of such items only on Saturday, although in the event of a Saturday being quite some way off, exceptions can be made on a day ending in the letter “y”.   Fortunately today was such a day and after a quick discussion, we managed our return to the boat for morning coffee, armed with a thing called a “Nougatine”, a glorious device containing all essential food groups except perhaps meat and vegetables and possibly fruit, but absolutely all the others. It certainly took away almost all of the pain of being stuck with a slightly inferior baguette when lunchtime came  around.

When lunchtime did come around, we were sitting beside a small forest clearing no more than ten kilometres further downstream, overlooking farmland opposite, wondering why we would move again today.

So we didn’t.