It kind of started as a lark. "Hey, we are from Cincinnati and Cincinnati has a sister city in France (Nancy) so wouldn't it be fun to take a gift from the mayor of Cincinnati to the mayor of Nancy?" Well, yeah, if you think someone can arrange that for you...so who do you call? The ED of the Sister City project - knew very little about the Nancy connection. The president of the Nancy group was somewhere in France and we couldn't find her. Time to call in the political connections. Surely if you are on a first name basis with the mayor...well -- it's actually the city manager's office that has the juice - but we ended up with a Rookwood Pottery Tile of the Roebling Bridge and a lovely letter from Mayor Mallory introducing us to the Maire of Nancy.
The road trip is about 3.5 hours from Paris by car (or 1.5 hours by high speed train) and we arrived around 11 on a Thursday night. We wanted plenty of time to explore before our 5:00 meeting on a Friday afternoon in City Hall (Hotel de Ville). We spent three nights in a wonderful 17th century hotel (Hotel deGuise) located just a couple of blocks away from the Place Stanislaus in old town Nancy. We had a mostly wonderful day poking around, taking photos, and found a really friendly barber (Cry's Barber Shop, 10 Rue Saint Epvre 54000 Nancy) who is looking for old American license plates to add to his collection. We had a yummy lunch (though the breakfast at the hotel was plenty for me) and wore our selves out following the walking tour on the Nancy (bilingual) Discovery Guide. 
After we finished speaking with the Adjoint Mayor and overseer of all things sister city related. His assistant gave us a personal tour of the Palais Stanislaus, which is now city hall. It is really fantastic. Their council chambers are in a room originally designed as an amazing ballroom with all the gold and murals and ceiling decorations you can imagine.
I see a future trip back to see the wonderful Musée des Beaux-Arts again, particularly their DAUM Collection, and to spend more time searching out their Arts-Deco jewels, and if we get there in season to see their sound and light exhibit in Place Stanislaus.
And I will stay in the same hotel, that was a delightful spot. We had dinner at The Excelsior, Chez Flo, and while the huitres were fantastic, the setting was a huge old restaurant with a really strong art deco decor, but not as intimate as I like. So I recommend it, but I am going to look for something a little more low key next time. There are plenty of restos from which to choose.
