Last night's son illuminare in the main square was amazing. The old buildings comprising the square we're brought to life, in sync with some Jean Michel Jarre-type music, by a laser light show. It's difficult to describe but the whole experience was well worthwhile. Have a look at this YouTube link. It shows the type of thing (I think I got this sent to me by Phil Knowles. Mel, his daughter, had seen it somewhere. Portugal, I think). The one we saw was on three sides of the square! But enjoy this...

http://youtu.be/L-7GP3oiSfM

Before this we'd had a curry in a nice little Indian resto called The Ganges. After his meal, an American guy on another table asked to see the whiskey menu. The waitress said that they had whiskey and would he like one. He repeated that he wanted to see the whiskey MENU. The exchange repeated several times before she relented and brought the menu. Sure enough, there was whiskey: sandwiched between gin and brandy. It was a curry house!
Nancy's main square: Stanislaw square, built in around1736, (named after
Stanisław Leszczyński, former King of Poland and father-in-law to King Louis XV of France). The square was built in one go, ie the buildings on the four sides are in the same integrated style.
Historical bit - Stanislaw, who was twice king of Poland and twice abdicated, settled here and, by agreement, Alsace Lorraine re-became French (having been lent to the Poles) on his death. The disputed region alternated between France and Germany (with each banning the other's language), before the region was finally settled in WWs 1 and 2: French!
Behind the four sides of the square are four mini Arch de Triumphs: three of which are on lines of sight from the square.
Today we head...South. Yay!
Without a map, I noticed that Nancy and Epinal (our just-chosen destination) were connected by a canal. The Canal de l'Est. So follow the canal. Easy.
Not!!!
Ok. No maps, but with the knowledge that following the canal was all we had to do, seemed straightforward. Easy. We picked up the canal about 4 miles south of Nancy. Nice Tarmac canal path. Very scenic. After about 10mls the canal path turned off into a road. No problem coz it still followed the canal. But after a few miles the road went left and the canal went right. We tried to keep the canal in view but it was getting further away. So we took a pathway off to the right (signposted 'fireman access only'. We hit the canal but the towpath was too bumpy to ride. We saw a small footbridge, so we tried cycling on the other side. Ok for a while, but then it got narrower and narrower. Too narrow to ride. Then we came across a young German fisherman -Is this the way to Epinal? I asked. Yes - he said. But you have to go through a wood! A mile later we were finding our way through muddy track (it had rained heavily last night) in the woods, along a very dark and overgrown track. Our only sense of direction was based upon my scouting knowledge of which side lichen tends to grow on trees in the northern hemisphere. We eventually got back onto roads and headed south (using the fact that Sky dishes and solar panels face south-ish). Eventually we rolled into Epinal at around 4:30pm.
Epinal is a lovely, picturesque, old city which has strong links with Napoleon Bonaparte.
Actually finding our way to a hotel involved us having to 'escape' from a housing estate into the hotel district (today's picture) via a hole on a wire fence. Very tricky.
On the bright side, today was fairly flat and our legs were able to rid themselves of a lot of the lactic acid that had built up from the last two rather hilly stages.
Had a nice pasta meal at St Remo's. A rather nice Sangiovese helped it down.
South again tomoz!