No cafes

It's lunch time, and we hoped for a small cafe where we could grab an espresso or a cafe au lait. We found a building with an old sign showing that it used to be a bar. Not anymore though. While we stood in front of it realizing that the pictures we're used to see, with a crowd of old french men sitting around a table drinking pastisse and playing boule belongs to the touristic places in the south. A woman suddenly came out of the house next door, and she could confirm there was no bakeries, no cafes, no magazines, no nothing in town. We had to go to Etampes she said. She told us that the house she lived in used to be a restaurant and that they had erased the sign. The neighbours wanted to do the same with the bar sign. I said it was a pitty because the sign looked very nice. "People kept knocking on the door asking for food when we had the sign, so we had to erase it." she said. So if anyone feels like moving to france to open a restaurant/bar/hotel, there should definitely be a market for it!

When we walked out of town, a sign for "Carrefour Etampes" confirmed who the killer of the magazines was. Carrefour is one of the worlds largest super market chains and it is not unusual that they have 100 cashiers, thereby replacing 100 small shops! Carrefour is coming to Norway now.