C'est Arras, en Flandre

The city I posted about yesterday is Arras (pop. 42,000) in French Flanders. Arras was nearly wiped off the map (75% destroyed) during World War I but, like so many French cities, it was rebuilt à l'identique after the war. The city didn't suffer as much during World War II. Below are some photos of buildings and shops around one of the city's two expansive places publiques (plazas, squares) in the Baroque style.

The French Wikipédia article about Arras says: Arras est réputée pour ses deux magnifiques places baroques qui forment un ensemble architectural unique au monde, son beffroi et sa Citadelle, tous deux classés au patrimoine mondial de l'UNESCO. Avec 225 édifices protégés au titre des monuments historiques, Arras est la ville avec la densité de monuments la plus importante de France.

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We took delivery of our new refrigerator late yesterday afternoon, pretty much exactly a week after the old one broke down. It was only 6½ years old, but since we paid about 650 euros for it in 2015, it only cost us 100 euros a year. Except for the scramble we've live through for a week now, that's not too bad.

            The new fridge is a frost-free Samsung model.

I who can't stand to put good food in the garbage had to recognize that it was advisable in this case. But we saved as much as we could by packing our upright freezer downstairs in the utility room as tight as possible, and by using an even older chest freezer as a refrigerator. That one is in the garage still, even though we emptied and de-commissioned nearly a year ago. We hadn't yet figured out how to dispose of it. It has served us well since 2005, including over the past week. It was not fun to have to run downstairs half a dozen times a day to turn it on and off, in an effort to keep it cold enough, but not so cold as to freeze the cheese, cream, etc., that we had put in there. It really helped to set alarms upstairs to keep us from forgetting to go down there at the appropriate times to turn it on or off.