Saturday 23 September 2017

Café du Centre in Cluny revisited

As I wrote in an earlier blog of the3rd of June, around that time our Saturday's local Café du Centre changed hands.

Re-opening
The big question in those days was when and in what way the Café would be re-opened. At the moment we are a couple of months down the road, and we know a bit more.
The café-restaurant has been re-opened in the meantime, with new staff, and although it looked as if in the first few weeks the amount of customers had diminished, it appears that the new owner has overcome those problems encountered in the introductory period. Again it is wise to reserve a table for our Saturday lunch. And although the menu has not changed since the re-opening (under the previous management the menu changed weekly) it is again a good place for a simple lunch.

Like in the olden days
The service however is not as good as it used to be, but the quality of the steak frites is considerably better ánd cheaper than a few months ago, and that more than makes up for it. A positive sign is that part of the old clientele has returned; we see quite a few familiar faces around the tables. And even though we still miss the previous owner and his personnel we cannot find a good reason to move our loyalty to another place.

For our own website click here.

Saturday 9 September 2017

Sound and light show

The façade in daylight
Bourg-en-Bresse (Ain, 01) hosted this year for the first time during various evenings in the summer a sound and light show. The most interesting we thought would be the show projected on the façade of the Monastère Royal de Brou, a beautiful Gothic building with a pure white façade decorated with elaborate stone carvings.

Sound and light show
Apart from this show there were two similar ones in the centre of town, on the facades of the Hôtel de Ville and on that of the theatre.
Because the last two were quite far away from the first one, we decided to stick with the Monastery. Another reason to see only one show was, that Bourg is approx. a one and a half hour's drive from our house, and even though we had waited till early September (when the first show takes place at 21h00 instead of 22h00), this outing would keep us occupied for the best part of the evening.

Sound and light show
We left home at 18h45, and arrived in Bourg well in time. And since there is a café-restaurant located right in front of the monastery, we could watch the show comfortably from behind a glass of wine. The only drawback on such occasions is that there are always some people who feel the need to park themselves on top of a low wall just in front of our table.


Sound and light show
Apart from the obligatory projections (flowers in all sort of colours, the various sculpted parts of the façade in different colours), there was also quite a bit of attention paid to those who had the monastery built, mediaeval history in general and to the way a building of this stature was built in the middle ages.

Sound and light show
The show lasted a good 15 minutes, and especially the projection of the construction of the monastery was very well done. And even though we reached home at about 22h45, I was very happy we had made this "long" journey just for this show.


Sound and light show
For our own website click here.