Day 3: Nancy

Today was another day of rail replacement buses in Luxembourg, which for us meant another day trip to France  This time we were planning to travel a bit further, to the town of Nancy which is around 95 miles south of Luxembourg City. The journey took us in the same direction as yesterday, passing through Bettembourg and Metz, before going further south towards Nancy. The journey took around 90 minutes and - for some reason - we didn't have to change in Bettembourg today, with the train going straight through to Nancy instead.

The train station in Nancy perhaps wasn't quite as impressive as the one in Metz had been yesterday, but it was still an attractive building.

We walked from there into the centre of town. Going to Nancy had been a fairly last minute decision so I hadn't done lots of research on it, but I knew that the main square was called Place Stanislas, so we followed signs towards that.

Before too long we got a glimpse of the entrance to the square towards the bottom of the street.

It was a large and impressive square!

The square is named after Stanislas Leszczynski who, for reasons I don't fully understand, had a career which involved being at different points both King of Poland and the Duke of Lorraine. There's a large statue of him in the middle of the square.

The most unusual thing about the square were these golden gates at each of its corners.

They were really beautiful  

And there were gilded lampposts too!

At one end of the square is a triumphal arch, the Arc Héré.

Not such which triumph it was built to commemorate, but it was very impressive  

The whole area around the square is a UNESCO world heritage site.

Once we'd finished admiring the square, we began exploring the surrounding streets. These led us to another arch, though this one wasn't quite as ornate.

We had a stroll through the nearby Parc de la Pépinière, from where we had a view towards the basilica of Saint Epvre.

From here we wandered down an avenue lined with beautiful little palm trees, like the ones we saw in Metz yesterday.

It was a really pretty part of town

And it was a sunnier day today so we actually had some blue sky in our photos for a change.

It was also quite a still day, so there wasn't enough wind to blow the large French flag on the front of this building!

We got a slightly better view of the basilica...

...and also got a glimpse of the Palace of the Dukes of Lorraine.

We found another arch too! This one is Porte Désilles.

There were some lovely floral displays on the opposite side of it  

Finding somewhere to eat in Nancy turned out to be a bit of a challenge; everywhere was quite quiet and places were closed on a Sunday.

We thought there might be some restaurants in the area around the cathedral, but we didn't have much luck there either.

In the end we made our way back to the main square, where we knew there definitely were some restaurants.

The prices were maybe slightly more expensive than they might have been if we'd managed to find somewhere away from the main square, but we certainly couldn't complain about the views  

Thanks to BA changing our flights multiple times, we have a flight back to Heathrow tomorrow at 11am. So we won't be able to squeeze anything other than a final hotel breakfast and tram ride into tomorrow morning! But despite all the flight changes, it's been an enjoyable trip and it's been fun to explore a new part of France, as well as seeing a little bit more of Luxembourg