In September...

...we'll finally have internet in our dorm/apartment which means that we will finally be able to Skype with people back home and that there will be pretty pictures to post both here and on Facebook.
The past few days have been filled with lots and lots of walking. Our first full day here we decided to be ambitious and make the 45 minute walk to Centre Ville or Downtown Metz. The picture to the left depicts the Seille river before it meets with the Moselle. The walk is really not that bad, but after lugging our luggage from train to train the day before, we were tired out by the time we got back. Centre Ville is much more of the picturesque cobblestone streets and narrow townhouses that you imagine when you think of a European city than the Technopôle area where GTL is located. We found the indoor market, it is small but I believe there is a larger outdoor market on Saturdays that we will have to locate. We bought a sandwich with sauccision, cornichons, and butter on delicious bread and some muscat grapes to eat for lunch, wandered around a bit, then walked back home. At Cora that evening, we bought our first sausages (I forget what kind) which seems to be a culinary tradition left over from the area's many German occupations; they were delicious with some coarsely ground Lorraine mustard. Michael is pictured with the sausage dinner on the right in our tiny kitchenette. More pictures will be coming of the dorm soon.
Wednesday we wanted to explore the neighborhood right next to the Technopôle in an attempt to find a downtown area a little closer than Centre Ville....no luck! Borny is pretty creepy and didn't have any of the cafes or bakeries that we were hoping to find. However, on the other side of Borny we came across the Mezanine which is a nicer shopping plaza area where we managed to buy the few kitchen things that I had refused to buy at Cora (rubber spatula and a dish towel). We also found a nicer (much smaller) grocery store over there. We bought the makings for a fresh cherry tomato pasta which went very well with the bottle of $3.50 Rosé from Cora.
Yesterday we walked back downtown in search of an english book store only to find it closed utnil August 24th :-(. We went back to the market and got another sandwich for lunch, this time with black forest ham, cornichons, olives, and butter, which was again, delicious. From the produce stand, we bought some beautiful strawberries and enjoyed our lunch on the edge of one of the rivers. That night for dinner, we had mussles in a white wine sauce (from the fish monger at the marché) and hericot verts (green beans only much skinnier). We've also bought a few cheeses; cheese and wine are two things that we've found to be quite inexpensive as compared to the states and we plan to enjoy them while we're here.
PHEW! Now that I'm finally caught up on the past few days, I'll be able to keep the posts shorter and more to the point. We'll soon be heading back to the Mezanine to get a few more things and buy groceries for today and tomorrow, tomorrow is a national holiday and everywhere, including Cora will be closed.