Drenched!

Today was our designated travel day to further north in France, very close to the Luxembourg border. We made a couple of stops along the way, although different from our original planned stops.

As well as looking at my new photos in the Driving set (1st link) and my new set for Metz (2nd link), you can admire my new Flickr cover image of Grindelwald.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/81692166@N05/sets/72157645709737341/
https://www.flickr.com/photos/81692166@N05/sets/72157645713526647/

Our two planned stops for today were the towns of Nancy and Metz. We had originally planned to visit them on one of the Salzburg days as a day trip, but it wound up being too full a day to complete. Plus they were on the way.

On arrival into Nancy, it was raining. Meh. There wasn't a whole lot to see anyway, plus it was all mostly outside stuff. So on we went. Eventually we stopped at this lovely garden just past Saverne, appropriately titled Jardin Botanique de Saverne, by which time it had stopped raining. It wasn't full of wildly colourful flowerbeds, instead a gigantic variety of different types of plants, some common and some rare.

We had a wander for quite a while, and my favourite section ended up being the carnivorous section, which was full of Venus Flytraps and other scary looking contraptions:

Jardin Botanique de Saverne

It started raining soon after we left the gardens, and dried up shortly before we arrived in Metz. We decided to visit Metz anyway, despite the threat of more rain. It's actually a really pleasant place - unfortunately it started raining again about half an hour into our visit. This cut short our visit before we could get to the gardens and parks surrounded by palaces. So that was a shame. Something to do next time!

Best of Metz

On the way back to the car, it truly started to rain. For the first time, I could equate the rain we were getting here to typical rain in Australia. It HAMMERED down for about 20 minutes. We sat under cover and watched the cars fly along and kick up an enormous spray. In the second photo you can see how heavily it's raining - we could barely see 50 metres in front of us:

...And the worst of Metz

Eventually the rain cleared up and we made a dash for the car before it stated raining again. We eventually made it to our destination, Illange, at about 8:00. Our host met us at the apartment, and we settled in. It's actually a really nice apartment, the most well-furnished of any apartments we've stayed in so far, and the cheapest (except for our Swiss chalet).

Join me tomorrow for our first foray into the land of Luxembourg!