The journey into the city is stressful by car. Made even more stressful when using an incorrectly entered post code into Google maps that takes you right to the heart of one of the poorest looking council estates that Nantes has to offer. You know when you read stories of the odd sad-sac who has driven his lorry into a pond because his sat-nav told him to and all you can think is why? At what point did you realise that the pond on Bromley common was not the Loughborough Argos depot that you entered into your machine. I can honestly say that there comes a moment of desperation that takes over, you keep driving past more and more burning cars and children throwing rocks at you with your internal voice saying, ‘turn back now’ but your external voice overriding it with, ‘no, if we keep driving we will find it, how can the satellites circling our planet be wrong?’ We ended up following road signs and found Les Machines.
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| You have to see it up close to believe it. There are elephants and then there is is this elephant. |
Les Machines occupy the now more or less defunct L’île de Nantes ship building section of the city, breathing a new very South Bank style life into the town. Simply put, Les Machines are a triumph of French (Victorian?) imagination and design, creating working machines that are fused with the natural world. We were all overwhelmed by Bernard the Crab Motorbike, the Giant Squid, Flying Fish, Sea-Horses and, most impressive of all is the Elephant. We watched it, we were in awe of it and then we rode it. It was quite slow.
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| A motorbike that is a crab. A motorcrab? A Crabberbike? No. It is called Bernard. |
The rest of Nantes is a bit of a schlep from Les Machines. We eschewed the Jules Verne Museum, basically because it was in the opposite direction to the rest of the city. Something I suspect he overlooked when growing up. I mean, honestly, if you are going to be the founding father of science fiction, at least grow up near the centre of the city so that the completely knackered parents of children who have no interest in your writing can visit.
Ginger and Blondie started flagging 20mins into the walk towards the castle at the other end of Nantes, we promised them ice creams. It was a dangly carrot that worked very well. We reached the castle, didn’t find the cathedral, looked in a dodgy little church where the girls dipped their fingers into the font and made the sign of the cross on their foreheads because the lady before them did. Hmmm…. who are we to say anything…..
Getting out of Nantes was interesting, I hate crossing tram lines or train tracks, I have a similar phobia to Michael Palin’s character in GBH who couldn’t cross water. Except maybe it isn’t an actual phobia, I just don’t like it. I tense up, sometimes I close my eyes (never advisable when driving), but this was a zigzagging over railway/tramway lines of epic proportions, I shudder to recall the journey.
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| For Sartre it was other people. For me it is this. |
Curious French things spotted today:
- Why do the French close a bar at lunchtime? It is lunchtime, a high traffic moment for them surely.
- Likewise, why shut down a carousel over lunchtime and dinner time? These are the moments that there are families just dying to waste €3 per child for 3 minutes and 17 seconds of circular fun. Instead you leave us with kids upset and not comprehending that ‘the man’ likes a long break.
- Posters in France are inexplicably cheaper than a tiny tin of toffees. Why?
- C&A still exists in France.
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| I loved C&A |
We had a BBQ with our holiday neighbors. The law and because I am reasonably nice prevent me from writing about it. I will say one thing though. I am glad that I do not earn a living from the desperate state of others. I will say another thing. I may have accused one of the people at the BBQ of being a Nazi, I drank too much, I tried to correct all their far right opinions. I feel I failed.
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