We stayed an extra night in Saint Etienne, so as to have a good look around on Monday.
We did have a good look too, probably better than expected. There are a bunch of museums in town, so we thought we’d take in one of them. Which one?
Musée d’Art et d’Industrie. Nope, closed Mondays.
Couriot – Musée de la Mine? Nope, also closed Monday.
Musée du vieux Saint-Etienne? Musée des Verts? Musée d’art moderne et contemporain? Maison du Patrimoine et de la Mesure? Nope, all closed Monday.
We had to settle for several cafes during the course of the day (breakfast, lunch, afternoon drinks and dinner), a few tram rides, shopping for socks (all dirty now and a couple of pair on their second day) and some aimless wandering. Not as bad as Brest, but fairly quiet really.
Special mention must be made of the worst toilet we’ve ever encountered. It was a ‘free’ public toilet, but seriously they should pay you to use it.
I can live with it being one of those hole in the ground type toilets, which actually had a stainless steel pan which looked like you were meant to place your feet into the indents to line yourself up and squat. Unfortunately, it looked like a lot of people may have missed the markers and not been too discerning about where they did their business.
It stank like a septic tank, as I suspect the s-trap didn’t work, or it didn’t have one. I braved it and wandered in and shut the door. No light, pitch black. There was a button next to the door and voila, light. But 20 seconds later, no light, and water started to spray all over the place. One way to make sure you didn’t overstay your welcome. Then I couldn’t get the door open. Great, I’m going to die of asphyxiation in a stinking toilet in France.
Fortunately, although I never found the light, I did get the door open, and escaped back into the fresh air. This thing made the open-air urinals look positively hygienic.
We did find some interesting things, and took plenty of photos. Saint Etienne doesn’t have the cobbled streets of Bordeaux or Toulouse but it does have some interesting little laneways and architecture.
We finished the day at a little pizzeria around the corner that does great pizzas and is run by a very friendly and chatty family. Which was interesting as they didn’t actually speak English.
Stephen and Michelle
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