Nancy, France

We left Alsace on May 7, Monday and arrived at Nancy just in time for dinner.  We stayed at a Mercure Hotel near Place Stanislas.  We chose the hotel mainly because it is closed to the historical center.  The hotel is only so so and we dined at a gastronomic restaurant just next to the hotel, the worst meal since arriving to France.  After dinner, I walked over to the Place Stanislas to photograph the night scene. I then went with Grace early next morning again to have a proper tour of the area.

Place Stainislas was built between 1752-1755 by Duke of Lorraine, former two times king of Poland,  Stanisław Leszczyński.  The City Hall of Nancy (Hôtel de Ville) is situated at the northern side of the square.

The square was packed with local people at night with many restaurants and cafe around it.  The statue in the center of the square is Stanisław Leszczyński.

At eastern side of the square are two symmetrical buildings, one housed the Opéra National de la Lorraine, and the other is the Grand Hôtel de la Reine.

Opéra National de la Lorraine  photographed in the morning sun.  On the western side of the square, there are another two identical buildings, one housed the Fine Art Museum and the other, the Pavillon Jacquet.

The southwest and southeast entrance into the square are gilded wrought iron gates and lanterns created by Jean Lamour (1698–1771).  The northeastern gate leads to Cathédrale Notre-Dame-de-l'Annonciation de Nancy.

At northern side of the square, the buildings was lower, in the center is the Arc de Triomphe built by Emmanuel Héré, the architect to Stanisław Leszczyński.

Beyound the Arc de Triomphe is the Place de la Carrière, which leads to Palais du Gouvemement.

 Arc de Triomphe at night.

Arc de Triomphe under the morning sun.

At northeastern and northwestern sides are two gilded wrought iron gates with ornate fountains by Barthélémy Guibal (1699–1757).

Place de Carriere is lined on two sides by row houses and trees all the way to the Palais du Gouvemement.

Palais du Gouvemement as seem at night.

The columns as seem from the hallway of the Palais du Gouvemement.

I have to hold Grace up and have her climbed up one of the base of the Column to get the picture of the Basilica Saint-Epvre.

 Walking away from the Place de Carriere and passing the Place de Saint-Epvre, we turned onto the Grand Rue.  On one side of the Grand Rue is the Musèe de Lorain, a fine example of early Renaissance architecture.

There are many interest small shops, restaurants and boutiques along the Grand Route.

The Grand Route took us all the way to the old city gate of Loraine, Porte de la Craffe, built in 1463.  We then turn to the east and walked through the beautiful Parc de la Pépinière and traced our footsteps back to the Place Stainislas to have breakfast and people watching.  The day was la Fête de la Victoire 1945 in France and she had a new president François Gérard Georges Nicolas Hollande.  It was about time for us to pack up and drive back to Paris.

Vosges Mountain

Vosges Mountain separates the French spoken Lorraine from German spoken Alsace.  The area has been fought bitterly between France and Germany throughout history.  After finishing lunch on May 7, Sunday at Riquewihr, we took D416 to cross the northern end of the Vosges Mountain to Saint-Marie-aux-Mines to join N59 and went through the tunnel that connect Lorraine with Alsace.

On D416, we had a glimpse of the beautiful rolling hills of Vosges Mountain.  A famous road, Route des Crêtes, goes through the ridge of the whole length of Vosges Mountain.  Originally a major military road built during the WWI, now a 3-star tourist destination of Michelin Green Guide.  It passes monuments and cemeteries in memory of 10s of thousands of soldiers of both-side died during the World War I.

Riquewihr, Alsace

Our first stop along the Route du Vine Alsace on May 7, Sunday is Kaysersberg, the next village that we visited was Riquewihr, a Michelin Green Guide 3-star destination.  The village is still surrounded by a rampart.  The gate to the city is actually the City Hall.  We could not park near the front gate but went to the side and walked in through the side entrance.  It is better maintained for the touristic purpose, thus less local car traffic.  Can you see the little grey cat that was walking away from us?  Grace took this picture.

I took this one.  The cat sat near the flower bed stared at us.

 Grace took this picture, see the restaurant on the right.

I took this one and walked into the restaurant to check it out.  It seems to be quite nice.  We decided to come back for lunch after a tour of the village.

We really did not walk far, after seeing so many Alsace cute half-timber houses at Strasbourg, Colmar and Karysersburg, we felt that we had seen enough.

This is City Hall and the front entrance coming into the Village.

We came back to the restaurant for lunch,  Can you see the shape of the glasses?  They are in vogue all over the place and is especially good for the Alsace white wine.

Grace insisted on that she wanted to have white asparagus, but it was only available in the menu and could not be ordered separately.  End up, I had the menu, which is a more Parisian cuisine and she ordered the pig knuckles, a local Alsace speciality.  She had my white asparagus appetizer and the knuckles and I had my fancy chicken breast.

The way we were fed, I would be as big as my friend in the picture.

 The village is surrounded by vineyard.

After lunch, we headed back the road that would take us across the Vosges Mountain back into Lorraine region.  The grey cat that we saw coming into the village was still there bidding farewell to us.

Route du Vine Alasce

The wine growing region of Alsace is alone the slope of Vosges Mountain facing west between Strasbourg and Mulhouse.  We could see this vast expanse of land on our right when driving south from Strasbourg, on our left hand side is Rhine river that separates France from Germany in this area.  However, the best way of exploring this wine growing region is following the Route du Vine Alsace along the foot of Vosges Mountain.  Along the way, there are many villages all involved in wine making and some of them are very historical.  There are also many vineyards open for tasting and shopping.  Since it is impossible for us to bring wine on the airplane back to Taiwan, we did not stop to visit any of them.

This simple image is more complicated to produce than it appears.  Two photographs were taken one focused on the flowers and the other focused at the distant vine.  In order to maintain the correct prospective, I was almost lying on the ground.  The images were then stacked together in Photoshop to create an image that everything is in focus.

It is normally not an issue for point-and-shoot camera and it is less an issue even for D7000 which is DX format.  The smaller sensor in these cameras create images with deeper depth-of-field, which means it is easier to get everything in focus.  For the FX format cameras, such as D700, we have to pay more attention.

The is the car that we drove around during our trip to Champagne, Lorraine and Alsace.  We rented the car from Hertz through Hotwire, a reasonably priced medium-size car with standard gearbox.  I printed all the road directions from google map but we still did not feel confident enough.  We asked for an addition of GPS unit at the rental car counter in the airport.  They had to charge a reasonable amount of fees for the GPS, which we agreed.  However, there was no portable GPS to add to the car and they gave us a free upgrade.  I only found out when I had the key to the car that they gave us a brand new automatic Mercedes with built-in GPS.  It had less than 3000 km on it and it drove like a dream.  It ran on diesel, for the whole three-day trip that took us from Paris to Alsace and back, it used only one tank of gas.  The GPS worked great, could not imagine how lost we would be if we did not have it.