For seven years we’ve been meaning to visit the village of St-Nicolas-du-Port, famous for its monster basilica named for the patron saint of boatmen, pawnbrokers and at least a hundred other just and worthy causes including of course, children. Even though he's THAT St Nicholas, there’s not a hint of Christmas anywhere to be seen.
This is or at least was a proper boatman’s port, with an apparently wonderful brewery turned museum (did I mention that in his spare time St Nick is the patron saint of brewers?) which we thought given museums in France make a point of being open on weekends, we would finally get to visit. Since our mooring was not much more than a kilometre from the Cathedral and a not much more to the museum and the day was fine and sunny, we were rather looking forward to the brewery tour, and even promised ourselves a lemonade on the way back, beer not being entirely to our taste.
We’ve seen signs like the one that greeted us many times before. “Open every day” it said, “but today it would be better if you came back in a few hours’ time”.
Perhaps we could have whiled away a few hours at a cafe, but they were all Sunday busy. We could also have waited in the cathedral as it was Sunday deserted. We figured however that by re-opening time our desire to visit the museum would surely have diminished. Instead we spent a pleasant hour or so wandering back through the stork conservation area, watching the monster birds on their nests, before drifting down the canal a bit till we found a shady spot for the rest of the afternoon. The brewery museum will just have to wait.
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