Orléans

(John) This will have to be quick as we have to tidy up this gite and move down the street to another one for just one night.  After that we may be without Wi Fi for a while.  Yesterday we spent the day in Orléans.    We wanted to find two stores. Kiabi, which is a cheap clothing store recommended to us and A sports store called Sport Position.  (I know a couple of positions but I'm not familiar with this one so I was naturally curious).  We found Kiabi quite easily and managed to get out without buying anything.  I tried on a jacket that made me look very french, but not in a good way. I looked like a french traffic cop without all the clubs and guns hanging off my belt.  Acros the parking lot was Go Sport.  A huge sports store a lot like some we had come across in the UK.  I was looking for a pair of hiking shoes and failed to find anything I liked.  Lesley and Sam found T Shirts on sale.  Lesley had trouble deciding between the light blue one and the dark blue one.  The fact that one had Argentina written all over it and the other one had FRANCE blazened across the back had not helped her to decide.  I was able to help however and she chose the french one.  Then we set about tracing down the Sport Positon.  Lesley inquired in her impeccable french and was told twice that it didn't exist.  This just made me suspicious and even more eager to find the Sport Position.
Without a map of the local area and with only a visual memory of the google map.  I navigated us around the Auchon Hyper Marché, back on to the highway over the railway and into the industrial estate, or Zone Industrielle, (Z.I) as they say over here.  A quick glance at the huge billboard size map at the entrance still did not reveal the Sport Position.  However, we had come this far and like Jacques Cartier venturing down the Fleuve we soldiered on into the heart of the Z.I.  Lesley was sceptical but I was determined.  The road wound around in huge arcs through the Z.I.  Looking just as one would expect an industrial estate to look except of course it was all in french.  Then just as I was beginning to despair the Sport Positon appeared.  White and Blue and Massive, a bold and definitive building that left nothing to the imagination.  Elated I slid through the tiny side door and into the store.  It was all over in two minutes.  I had not found what I was looking for in the Sport Position and I resolved never to try it again.

Then all we had left to do that day was visit the rest of Orléans.  That featured lunch by the car, an art gallery, a hotel, a cathedral, a river, an indoor market an outdoor book market, a used bookstore, a mall, 4 kebabs avec frites et boissons, and a whole pile of walking around a very picturesque old town.