After I published the blog last night we did something we rarely do, which is go out at night. But the Port Captain strongly recommended that we head back to Stanislas Square after the sun goes down. We were both glad we listened to him.
It is a relative short walk to the square, but we noticed that the character of the town had changed. The day town crowd was business people and tourists, but the night time crowd was much younger. Later we learned that 25% of the population of Nancy are students, and they had filled up the coffee shops and brasseries around the square and were thoroughly enjoying a comfortably cool evening.
We walked around for two hours, which had us out to the ungodly hour (for us) of 10pm. We really enjoyed ourselves and the energy of Nancy at night.
It was cold overnight so we slept in. After a nice Tortilla Breakfast from Costco we were on our way to see the Corbin Museum. It was a pretty good walk thru town to the museum almost all of it uphill. Lorraine is a hilly region in France, so once we left the river it was all up hill to the museum.
The Corbin House is now called the Musee de L’Ecole de Nancy. It houses a collection of glass ware and furniture from the Art Nouveau movement in Nancy. Nancy along with Paris were centers for the movement which was in vogue for about twenty years in the late 1800’s and very early 1900’s. It was eventually surpassed by the Art Deco movement which Americans are more familiar with.
Eugene Corbin was the richest guy in Nancy during the time of the movement and a big supporter and collector of Art Nouveau. He had originally lent his collection to the Nancy Art Museum, but a few years before he died, the Art Museum had put the collection in storage, unhappy, he had his collection returned to him, and converted his family home to the museum we visited today.
We took our time going thru the museum and enjoyed the extensive collection. We finished our visit by walking through the gardens of the home.
Having had a long uphill walk, we decided we had earned a sit down lunch, so we headed back towards the center of town to look for a restaurant. After looking at many restaurants we settled on one that appeared to specialize in local foods called La Portager. We settled into our table and began the process of trying to decide what to order. Often at lunch time the options are written on chalk boards, and can be a little confusing to understand, also the waiter didn’t speak English. We were trying to figure out what we wanted and how to order it, when the two couples on either side of us began to sense our uncertainty. One of them finally told us in English that if we had any questions he would be glad to help us. His partner pointed at him proudly and said that he speaks English because he lived in New Zealand. With his help, and recommendation we ordered a platter of local foods for two. It was absolutely delicious.
We chatted with them for a while. They were tourists like us, but from Paris. As they left we thanked them for their help. Then the couple on the other side of us took over our guide of food from Lorraine. They were a couple from Brittany who had an American son in law. We enjoyed talking to them and they convinced us to try a selection of regional desserts.
We really enjoyed our lunch because it combined good food, excellent company, and we experienced new tastes. Thanks to our helpers from Paris and Brittany, and the good humor of our waiter who put up with us stumbling around in a language we did not understand.
In 1792 during the French Revolution the Benedictine Nuns in Nancy were driven from their convent. Not having any practical skills to survive on they began producing Macarons that they cooked when they lived in the convent. It turned into a very lucrative business, and the same recipe is still used today to produce them. A Macaron is a cookie and everyone we have met in Nancy told us we had to buy some. After leaving the restaurant we headed over and picked up a box, but we were too full to try them. We will give you a review in the future.
