contentedsouls

Having left early without breakfast I was starving by the time we’d moored at Pont a Mousson at lunch time. We headed straight for the restaurant which had been really busy when we stopped here before. All the outside tables were full despite it being 1.30 (quite late for lunch by French standards), but they were able to fit us in inside – I was glad they did as the inside decor was fabulous; shabby/chic with a lot of the ‘shabby’ painted in along with the cartoons. I’m spoilt for choice as to which pics to use. The dinner was glorious too with the ‘sauté’ potatoes charred in a pizza oven … yum yum. G had the cafe gourmand for pud; always a good choice as you get several puds plus a coffee (literally means ‘greedy’) and I the profiteroles with hot chocolate sauce.

So back to the boat and, I suspect, a snooze for G whilst I went off to fetch some badly needed supplies. Failing to find the pate I wanted (or, indeed, any pate), I asked the assistant – at this point my French became, apparently, completely incomprehensible. Now there’s always potential for confusion with pasta, or even ready rolled pastry (although that is pronounced ‘pat’), but not when you add fois gras, de Campagne, etc. It’s the first time this has happened to me and it’s bloody annoying – I obviously caught the chap on a bad day and it, clearly, embarrassed his colleague who intervened and showed me where it was (all in tins – no wonder I couldn’t find it).

G later surprised me by declaring an interest in walking the dogs with me, so we set off down the river and headed home back across town, stopping for a drink and watching the world go by as the sky darkened.

Well stocked up for the weekend we decided to leave in the morning (Friday) and try and find somewhere to hole up for the weekend away from people, bars, restaurants, patisseries and temptations in general. The jobs were stacking up and the boat a tip.