A very old postcard and a joke

I couldn’t resist putting this one up for you to see. It was posted in November 1898. You can just see that even 110 years ago children enjoyed digging holes in the sand! Royan is still a popular seaside town, rebuilt after the second world war and today there is concern that the ‘new’ concrete cathedral is crumbling.

What is written on the front? A joke :

« Pourquoi le Rossignol ne chante-t’il plus lorsqu’il est en cage?
C’est qu’il a perdu la clé des champs (des chants) »

“Why doesn’t the nightingale sing when he’s inside a cage?
Because he has lost the key of the fields (songs)". Doesn’t really work in English, does it?

Anyone for ice?

I think it’s important to show the glaciers of France before they all disappear. These tourists were visiting the ice grotto of ‘ice for drinks’(?) around 1908. Perhaps people needed carrying out more than in.

Unfortunately, the glacier is shrinking by 70 meters a year, but a grotto is still opened up for visitors today