Mondays are very quiet days in most French towns, and in small villages even more so. Everybody is resting up from the weekend, and a majority of the people who work in shops and markets on Saturdays and Sunday mornings take Monday off. Mennetou was like that — nearly deserted — on a recent Monday.
![](https://2.bp.blogspot.com/_Y0pLn9JmlUo/SBgPW04s09I/AAAAAAAAEyE/899fR_8jLIo/s860/P1100053a.jpg)
were growing all around the town in pavement cracks
and wall grates, and even up old stone walls in places
Chrissou was suprised there was no good place to get a café crème. Well, there were two places to have coffee in Mennetou, or three if you count a snack bar down near the river. The snack bar was closed (maybe for the season; I didn't look to see if its hours were posted). On the main street — the highway — a little café-tabac was open. I know because I saw people going in and coming out with their newspapers.
The café-tabac wasn't very appealing because its big plate-glass windows seemed to be completely pasted over with posters, and its front door is right on the curb of the highway (even though you couldn't call it a busy road). A third place, a salon de thé that is part of a hotel/restaurant next to the town gate where there's a plaque commemorating Joan of Arc's 1429 visit, seemed to be shut for the day, but I'm not sure. We didn't really check.
That's small-town France on Mondays for you. Most everything is closed up tight.
![](https://3.bp.blogspot.com/_Y0pLn9JmlUo/SBgPXE4s0-I/AAAAAAAAEyM/Xj7kmx2FkKQ/s860/P1100082a.jpg)
see me and my camera in the little spot of
reflected light at the bottom of the picture.
Fewer than a thousand people live in Mennetou-sur-Cher. On a Monday, very few of them are out on the streets, that's for sure.