Friday, January 07, 2011

I♥Nîmes

I've said it before, but I do like Nîmes. I just love the old quarter, the Maison Carré which has been beautifully cleaned, the arène and the shops.
We popped in this morning to get some goodies at the indoor market which reminded us how good the market actually is. At one point Jan asked a butcher for some veal escalopes which he cut perfectly and then beat out nice and thin. A true artisan.
Jan had already mentioned that she fancied a coffee so as we were heading to the coffee bars in the Cupole I noticed a chocolatier advertising all things chocolate. Deroy is a posh looking chocolate shop/bar and as we had recently both had excellent hot chocolate at Segafreddo in the Geant shopping mall, a hot chocolate sounded good. We sat and ordered two chocolates and a pain au chocolat for Jan.
'Sorry sir, we don't have hot chocolate or pain au chocolat,' said the nice lady behind the counter.
Somewhat perplexed I told her not to worry we'd have two grande crèmes and cake instead. 'Certainly sir,' she said and a short while later brought us two expressos.
Even after all this time I still shake my head in wonderment at customer service in France.

1 comment:

Jean said...

I love it when they say "j'écoute" and you know they haven't listened to a single word.

Still, it's all so much more polite and pleasant than the average coffee bar experience in the UK, where no-one says hello, goodbye or you're welcome, but you get the totally pointless and obligatory "is everything alright for you?" from the badly trained spotty oik collecting the trays.
(End of rant.)