St Etienne is a one hour train trip from Lyon, so we had plenty of time to ease into the day and get to the train staion-Part Dieu. Since I am restricted in making reservations online, I went to the reservation desk to make as many of my reservations as I could. I think I did well even though the reservations person was a 20 something who spoke virtually no English. Writing departure cities and destinations and the words "mid-morning" seemed to translate well. Working the kiosk for printing the tickets I had reserved online was a bit more challenging. Even this morning I discovered that when I finally learned how to work the thing (involving about 20 false starts), I only printed out one leg of the journey-the least important leg. Luckily (I hope) I will have time today to go to the train station in St Etienne and try my luck again. At least I know the right 6 letter code to get in the machine. You don't know till you know. Since my later journeys involve several trains, I'm sure I didn't get the TGV trains. They also cost quite a bit less. I am sure I will be draging those suitcases around quite a bit. Yesterday they were quite full and heavy, so something will have to be done about that.
Our plan here in St Etienne is to visit the Modern Art Museum that is second only to Pompedeau in Paris. There is a Design Center as well, but that's about it. We plan a day in Le Puy (see last summer's blog on our way too short stay in Le Puy) and since we can literally see a front coming in bringing rain for the next few days, I suspect we will do Le Puy the end of the week. I might do 2 days there. It's a 45 min rail trip, and Marcia has already highlighted the local trams we need to take to the station.
Our little apart is almost exactly like the apart we had in Lyon. We do have a shower curtain here, but by now we wonder why. The handheld shower spray is not powerful enough to make much splash outside the tub anyway. I'm still glad I bought the little non-slip rug for the shower. Even though the hospital is on block away we would rather not tour it.
The view from our apart is much better here. We have the city of St Etienne to our left and the rolling countryside to our right. Instead of a rail station, we have rows of greenhouses outside our window making for a much quieter evening and the ability to get some air without noise. The windows have a roll down shade outside so that one can block the afternoon sun that makes our apart hot. At night I leave this shade shut but open the window and some fresh air gets in and cools us. After this front does it's thing we will probably be happy to shut the windows and use our blankets, but today the highs will be in the low 80's, so capris and short sleeves for me with raincoat tucked in the backpack.
Our Kah-Zee-no Supermarket is a 5 min walk away. It is not a particularly pleasant walk-mostly beside a busy highway. It is surrounded by other big box stores, so after the busy highway we make our way through the suburban parking lot to get to the mega grocery. You know you are in surburbia when you don't have to put a euro in a slot to get a shopping cart.
We stocked up at the Kah-Zee-no and wondered whether we would have to rent one of the vans Kah-Zee-no offers in order to get back with our purchases. It was not a steep hill we had to go up, but with a load of groceries it seemed steep enough. Marcia did leave enough pep to go back down to the Bread & Sweets for a baguette and some pomme patisserie.
Our dinner was canard in a can. We had noted that Jean-Louis made us a delicious dinner from canned duck, so we looked for it in the supermarket and found it. It was misplaced on a shelf, but we grabbed it anyway-not knowing the price. It was the priciest thing on our grocery list at about 10euros, but not as expensive as in a restaurant. Also, it had 6 duck legs and thighs, so we have several duck meals to look forward to. Served with taglatallie and some asparagus and a bottle of muscadet, it was quite fine. Marcia has tried to find it online. We can get it in the US for about $65. So, we had quite a fine meal and will be enjoying duck in a can while we can. Marcia spotted some fig preserves in a little plastic container. I'm thinking that some of that leftover duck and these figs might like to get together soon. Hummmm.
So Bon Appetite from St Etienne on the banks of the Rhone.
KG
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