After boasting a week or two ago about the joy of train travel in Europe we suffered a disappointingly slow trip today. The speed of the train barely touched two hundred and ninety-eight kilometres per hour for most of the distance and never made three hundred at least while we were watching. Despite that, it arrived on time to the second of course and as is always the case for us, at least on the five days out of seven when there is not a transport strike, the perfect confluence of train, bus and train timetables had us arriving in Lunéville at exactly midday.
Exactly midday is exactly the wrong time to arrive anywhere in France, as it marks the beginning of the two hour lunch break for all, including the nice folk at the rent-a-car place and the taxi drivers who we would very much have liked to take us to that same rent-a-car place. This is not the first time we have experienced the “closed for lunch” phenomena, and we have learned that when one can’t beat ‘em, one is very well advised to join ‘em. In this case joining ‘em under a shady tree with fresh baguettes filled with chicken and cheese and toasted walnuts accompanied by even fresher strawberry tarts proved to be a splendid way of filling in the requisite time.
Eventually we did make it “home” again to our little postcard village, feeling quite out of sync with our new time zone, if not a little worse for wear. We kept our reunions brief, retiring just as the rains came, happily oblivious under the grey sky to the fact that at least several hours remained before the day was scheduled to end.
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