And that’s it… back to Canada. I’m glad it’s August and the weather will still be hot. It’s harder to come back from traveling when you are facing a total different climate, like we did last year, in March, from Buenos Aires to Toronto.

To close this French series, I wanted to make you drool. Yes, I’m sadistic.

I love French bakeries. There is one at every corner and they all carry fresh bread, croissants, pains au chocolat and pains aux raisin. They also have their specialties, from elaborate cakes to simple fruit pies. I don’t really have a favorite, it depends on my mood, I guess it would be between: raspberry chausson and éclair (long thin pastry made with filled with a cream and topped with icing)…. But trust me, they are all good!

See you guys in Canada!

You can follow our French trip here on Flickr: France (2010).

Bread

Bread

French Bread

At the Bakery

Strawberry Pies	Flan
Éclairs et Religieuses	Fruit Pies
Macarons	Rasberries Pie
Pains au Chocolat et Croissants	Pain au Chocolat aux Amandes
Pies and Cakes	Meringues

Mille-Feuilles

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I swear, I won’t do it again. For the first and only time in my life, I followed in Sarkozy’s footsteps: we visited the same city only a day apart. Thanks God we didn’t meet.

For our last week-end in France, Feng and I went back on the Atlantic coast. We spent a few days with my family and left to explore St Nazaire, a few kilometers away. The town isn’t pretty: it was heavily bombed during WWII and 80% of it was destroyed. It was rebuilt right after the war in a somewhat minimalist style — understand one main street and square buildings scattered around.

We walked around the harbor and I felt like in Pink Floyd’s Animals cover. The city is very industrial and it focuses on shipbuilding (mostly cruise ships nowadays), aeronautical engineering and port activities. As for art, some Tintin posters are scattered around the harbor, as the comic-strip reporter written by Hergé famously stopped by St Nazaire in the album The Seven Crystal Balls.

We came back in the evening and enjoyed a beautiful sunset on the beach, back in St Michel.

You can follow our French trip here on Flickr: France (2010).

Tintin in St Nazaire

Dockers' Union Building

Fishing in the Harbor

Fishing in the Harbor

The Industrial Side

Seagull	Welcome to... the Machines...
The Beach	The Harbor

This is why I failed my driving test in France... twice!

Sunset on the Beach

Sunset on the Beach

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I love cities by night. Most change a lot and reveal a totally different atmosphere — it’s like traveling. I’ve already shown you snapshots of Ottawa by night, Toronto, London, Paris… Here is Nantes, my hometown.

The city is very pedestrian friendly, especially the area around the castle, Bouffay, which has a lot of bars and restaurants. Others cool spots at night are the Isle of Nantes with the Buren Rings, as well as the Quai de la Fosse, on the bank of the Loire River.

You can follow our French trip here on Flickr: France (2010).

Place Royale

Decré Lafayette

Catching the Tramway

Tramway in Motion

Quai de la Fosse

Place Graslin and the Theater	LU Tower
Titan Crane	Nantes Harbor
Nantes at Sunset	Roofs of Nantes
City Hall	Bouffay

Buren Rings

Buren Rings

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Since 2007, the Machines de l’Ile de Nantes and the great elephant are one of the major tourist attractions in Nantes.

The 12 meters high mechanical elephant is made from 45 tons of wood and steel. Several times a day, it takes passengers for a walk around the Isle of Nantes, located in the middle of the Loire River. Riding it is quite expensive but it’s free to just see it move around, wink, trumpet, and spray nearby photographers with water (oh well, it was a hot day).

You can follow our French trip here on Flickr: France (2010).

Embarcadère

Les Machines de l'Ile

Sleepy Elephant

Parked Elephant

Elephant Day Off	Elephant Trunk
Elephant's Head	Peeing!
Moving	And Spraying the Crowd
Trunk	Blowing Water

Painting the Clouds

Walking Around

Walking Around

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Jules Verne, the famous French author, was born in Nantes. And today, in the warehouses of the former shipyards of Nantes, artists try to recreate a travel-through-time world which borrow from both Jules Verne’s imagination and Leonardo da Vinci’s passion for mechanic.

The site has two main attractions: the Great Elephant and the Marine Worlds Carrousel. Other creatures are being built in the hangars nearby and should add to the magical experience in the future.

The Isle of Nantes is also a reminder of the city’s industrial past. The yellow Titan Crane was left by the Chantiers Dubigeon, an historic shipyard. From the Isle, you can see the Quai de la Fosse, with its historical crooked buildings. It is still nicknamed “Quay of Buttock” because it was the red light district when Nantes was an important port.

You can follow our French trip here on Flickr: France (2010).

The Hangars

The Nave

Isle of Nantes

Spot the Elephant

The Nave	Titan Crane
Along the River	Tip of the Isle

The Marine Worlds Carrousel

The Marine Worlds Carrousel

Quai de la Fosse

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Whoui Spik Inglish!

The other day, we went to see Kiss & Kill, a U.S movie. You may have heard of it: the English title is “Killers”. Why did the French bother changing the original English title to another English title? No idea. Similarly, “The Spy Next Door” is “Kung Fu Nanny” here. Go figure!

We sat in the Gaumont’s tiny seats with no cup holders (French don’t eat or drink during movies) and watched the commercials. Two minutes later, I burst out laughing when I heard that the ice-cream advertised was “as good as gold” – it sounded like “has goude has golde”, pronounced with the worse French accent you can imagine. Yes, I know, some of you find it sexy. But it doesn’t mean it’s not ridiculous.

When you sit in the T.G.V, you hear loud and annoying announcements to encourage passengers to talk to the “rail team” (the “rele teeme”?) should they have any questions. It’s only after the third announcement that I actually understood they meant “the rail team” – that bad.

Okay, don’t get me wrong. I know I have an accent. I must have one anyway even though apparently I don’t really sound French. Yet I can’t help wondering why French are obsessed with English words they can’t pronounce correctly.

French already use a certain number of “English” words: le parking (for parking lot), le pressing (dry-cleaner), les baskets (running shoes), le pull-over (sweater)… These words, like many other foreign words (Kalashnikov, pesto…) came to be part of the French vocabulary and are pronounced with a normal French accent. Similarly, English people say “déjà-vu” and “maître d’” after all. I personally don’t have any problem with that and I do find Quebec’s tendency to come up with a translation for every single word of English origin a bit annoying at times. I mean, “le chien chaud” for “hot dog”? Come on!

Now, what I truly dislike is the current trend of using English words or sentences just to sound cool. First, I don’t see why English would be cooler than French, and second, the accent is just laughable at best. If I hear one more person saying they study “business” (“bouzinez”) I’m gonna laugh. Various media use a lot of English words as well, presumably to sound modern and cool. The slogan of one of the leading radio stations, NRJ, is “hit music only”, pronounced “it mousic only”. They have their “top vidéo” (why the accent??), a “music store”, and a “people” section — in French, “people” means famous people, as in stars and jet-setters.

The hardest thing for me is to revert to pronouncing these words with a French accent, to drop the “h” for instance. Otherwise, people don’t understand. And yes, it’s harder than it seems!

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We came back from Paris before Bastille Day and decided to spent it on the Atlantic coast, in the family house. This is where I spent most of my summers as a kid and a teen and I hadn’t been back there since 2002. At the time, I was coming back from Australia and New Zealand and I had spent the entire summer almost locked in a room trying to study for my university exams the following September.

This is a sleepy village 45 minutes from Nantes. Its claim to fame is the cookie factory. Other than that, there isn’t much: a roundabout (French love roundabouts and even the smallest village has one), a church, a bar-tabac (a small corner store) and a news agent. I both loved and hated the place as a teen. The beach is only a few minutes’ walk from the house and going there is fun, yet it gets very lonely after a while. Summer seemed to stretch forever: between going to the market and biking to the news agent to buy a magazine once in a while, there wasn’t much to do. I’m the oldest kid in the family and my sister, the second oldest, is 6 years younger than me. I spent entire evenings shouting at a bunch of kids (brother, sister, cousins…) who kept on sneaking into my room and yet I was bored at the grownups table at dinner time.

This was like a blast from the past for me. Feng and I didn’t have a car so we had to walk everywhere, like when I was a teen. Because nobody lives in the house full-time, there is no T.V and no Internet connection. I found most of the magazines I had left the last time I was there, eight years ago. I found my old swimsuit and my old posters. I found peace and quiet.

The coast had been badly damaged by TotalFina’s Erica oil spill in 1999 but little remains of the disaster today. I remember, at the time, there were pools of oils washed upon the shore and it looked like it would never be clean again. I guess ten years have passed…

You can follow our French trip here on Flickr: France (2010).

Local Cookies

Ne Pas Stationner

St Michel Beach

Bastille day Fireworks on the Beach

Bastille day Fireworks on the Beach

Streets in Pornic	Tall Trees
Boats at Low Tide	Naming Boats
Trees at Sunset	Castle in Pornic

Pornic

Famous Ice Cream Shop

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Sunset is around 10:30 pm in France right now and with the summer heat, we had plenty of time and motivation to roam around Paris at night. I have my favorite spots, they are not so original but they are lovely: le Louvre, along the Seine, the Trocadéro, the Eiffel Tower…

We walked across the Pont des Arts and were surprised to noticed a bunch of locks attached to the fence, like in Montevideo — I guess it’s good luck for lovers. Funny thing, I don’t remember seeing that many locks just a few years ago, I wonder how and why the tradition suddenly started. The bridge was packed at night and people drank and ate there after sunset. I had a lot of fun taking long exposure pictures of the Seine and capturing the motion of the tourist boats passing under the bridge.

Most of the area around the Eiffel Tower was blocked because of both July 14th (France’s National Day) and the FIFA World Cup village. Yet, the view from Trocadéro remains one of the best in Paris.

As for the Louvre, it’s a quiet spot at night, not so many people come take pictures of the pyramids for some reason. The main courtyard (Cour Napoleon) offers the best views on Pei’s controversial work.

You can follow our French trip here on Flickr: France (2010).

Fun Fair

Need a Drink

The Eiffel Tower

The Eiffel Tower

Le Louvre

The Pei Pyramid	Reflection at the Louvre
Busy Pont des Arts	Lots of Locks

Le Louvre

Le Louvre

Bridges of the Seine

Boat Passing By

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We decided to visit Versailles, the royal palace in the suburb of Paris, 20 km away. We took the RER and arrived in the nice posh suburb.

Once we reached the doors of Versailles, we realized we were in trouble. The lineup was so long I couldn’t even find where it started. I asked how long it would take us to get tickets: at least 90 minutes. And to actually get into the Palace, we had to queue another 90 minutes. Feng walked around a bit as we tried to assess how to make the best out of the situation. I looked up at the Palace and I saw people on top of each other by the open windows. No way I’m queuing at least 3 hours for a rush visit.

Meanwhile, Feng discovered visiting the gardens was cheaper and there were only about four people in line for that. Deal.

We were not disappointed, the gardens were huge and beautiful. I wish most of the fountains had worked though, and I wish the French were better organized. Granted, this is high-season but we had no problem getting in London’s major attractions for instance, and they were as busy. And please, please, set up more than one toilet in Versailles. I mean, this is ridiculous…

You can follow our French trip here on Flickr: France (2010).

Versailles Maze

Gold Fountain

Doors of Versailles

Park of Versailles

By the Water

Fountain Show	Greek Inspiration
Courtyard	Fleur de Lys
Golden Doors	Taking a Break

The Palace

Looking towards the Garden

The Palace

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We got extremely lucky with the hotel the first couple of days: we had booked online again from London with Expedia (which really should be paying me for all the times I mentioned them!). The hotel turned out to be a three stars renovated building in a quiet street, and we had the biggest bathroom I had never seen. When we asked to stay longer, we were told it wouldn’t be a problem because they had rooms available. However, we had to pay the regular rate, which was over €155, more than double what we paid through Expedia. And of course, the rooms were not available online anymore…

We browse Expedia again but nothing good came out. The couple of affordable places we saw had terrible reviews and I’m not booking an hotel which has 99% terrible reviews. Eventually, we found another hotel in the same neighborhood to avoid crossing the city with our backpacks again (the subway is not backpack friendly). The room was on the 7th floor and the bathroom was a toilet plus a hose above it for shower. Ugh. The door couldn’t be locked so it flooded everywhere — I mean, could have flooded everywhere if we had had enough water. But at the 7th floor, we only had a trickle… I guess it’s part of the Paris experience.

You can follow our French trip here on Flickr: France (2010).

Mime at the Eiffel Tower

Doors at the Tuileries

Pompidou Center

The Eiffel Tower

Pompidou Fountain	Pompidou Center
Pompidou Center	Pompidou Center
Pompidou Center	Four French Men
Chairs at the Tuileries	Sculpture at the Tuileries

The Eiffel Tower and Tower Montparnasse

The Tuileries

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