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Published: August 8th 2007
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St Malo is one of those places that I had been told about and somehow managed to miss three years ago on the way up to Mont St Michel. But now I've made it, and am just more then a little pleased about it too. St Malo is a walled city and many moons ago they decided to build a fort that surrounds the city right on the ocean, come high tide the waves crash against the seaside walls. On some of the surrounding islands other forts were built but none as grand as St Malo. There is a nice little walk around the ramparts that gives you a spectacular views of the surrounds and the old town. The big bonus was the sunshine, some of the hardy souls were even swimming and sunbaking, but I wasn't that keen. St Malo also has a nice collection of British tourists as it is one of the ferry ports for the ferries coming across from England.
Estuaire 2007 is an event that is in it's first year and celebrates life on and in the estuary between Nantes and St Nazaire. The main part of it is a series of sculptures along the
estuary. With my vast knowledge of art, I decided that it would be a good idea to go and explore. Well it was a good plan, armed with the brochure/booklet (mainly in French) off I went in search of the rubber ducky. It was nowhere to be seen, but I did get to see some new parts of town that I hadn't seen before on the great voyage of non-duck discovery. This was mainly due to the booklet and the map within being as useful as, well you know, artistic it may be but a work of cartographic efficiency it wasn't. So ended the hunt for the duck part one.
To celebrate the start of Estuaire there was a big opening phenomenale party down on the dock that forms the base for Estuaire. This mob are so organised that they had to postpone it a day. Which was understandable when we got there late on saturday night for a look, nothing like a little bit of organised chaos. Mind you the whole of Nantes had the same idea, I didn't realise that so many people lived here, as you never see them out and about. There was four different
stages with a variety of acts including a little bit of burlesque and mini-KISS (a KISS tribute band made up of little people or dwarfs, but I missed seeing them). By this time I was really starting to wonder if the Estuaire people could organise running a choko vine over a dunny, people everywhere, a token three food stalls that had what looked like a bizarre bidding process happening to get near a piece of food, bars everywhere (that bit looked almost organised) and what could be described as the salmon run. There was two ways into Estuaire, but everyone used the convenient one, since the other got you nowhere. Coincidently the way in was the same path that you used to get out of the place. Which meant that you now had half the population of Nantes arriving through a fenced off corridor ten metres wide while the remaining half of Nantes population was trying to depart through the same fenced off ten metre corridor. Oh and just to make it easier we're going to put a stage with entertainment halfway along the corridor so everyone stops to watch the show. Beam me up Scotty, it wasn't getting any
prettier until some enterprising Frenchman decided that part of the fence needed to come down. This was a stroke of genius, until you got to the other end and one of the little men with a walkie talkie was trying to fix the hole in the fence that someone was trying to make at the other end while everyone was explaining to him why they were walking in the forbidden area and wanted to come out through that hole. I learnt some new French words that night, I think the loose translation was open the fence now or that walkie talkie may become hard to use due to it's new location.
Three strikes and you're out right, well Estuaire got one more chance, armed with the brochure and a French person it was off to find the rubber duckie. Conveniently when the Fete du Velo was on, this means everyone in Nantes who owns a bike or has stolen one rides along the Estuaire route. To make this more cycle friendly they close off the majority of roads to supplement the bikepaths. Nice concept really gets everyone out and about enjoying themselves, except if you happen to be driving
a car. But I accepted this ok, it just meant walking a little, nothing like a bit of sunshine and a stroll by the river. Now you would think that if you have a bikepath and a road to cycle on that you wouldn't really need the footpath as well. Did I mention that I'm in France, because here you do, happily strolling along the footpath watching all the bike riders go by on the road and bikepath when along comes the first of many people that thought the footpath was a better place to ride their bike. Oh and sorry if you Mr Pedestrian was in the way, but I'm on a bike and it's Fete du Velo, well sorry Mr Cyclist if I made you ride into the trees because I'm not moving, it's a footpath. The added bonus of all this was that we did eventually manage to find the duck.
My great Estuaire adventure continued with a boat cruise from Nantes to St Nazaire, finally I got to see most of the things in the brochure and learnt a bit about the estuary as well. But being an art thing the boat was covered in
mirrors, nice look from the outside, although I was beginning to know how a fish feels when you wrap it in foil. The other part of this adventure was coming back to Nantes on public transport. Lucky the lady in the info booth where the boat docked in St Nazaire was incredibly helpful and pointed me in the right direction. How good are the trains in France, this thing was unbelievable, clean, space age like and the conductor was in a smart suit and confederate army style cap. Definately not something that city rail could come up with. From that it was onto the tram, again the new series are all clean and space age like with a similar theme to the train. I was on a bit of a public transport feeding frenzy by now so it was onto the navibus (ferry) for a quick ride through the tunnel. It's taken a while but Estuaire and I have finally bonded and I'm starting to enjoy this art type stuff. Especially after another sensational lunch at La Cabone (welcomed just like I was home at Nun's, Grind or the Monkey) when I went to see what they had done to
the fountain. For a tin shed look on the outside they did amazing things inside when they converted it to a hotel. I was well and truely impressed by it and just sat around in there for a while thinking lookout archibald fountain here I come, bit of scaff, couple of sheets of tin, a bit of furnishing and art it is.
Well those of you chained to your desks increasingly hating me with every new addition to the blog will be doing cartwheels with the knowledge that the party is nearly over. Yes that's right reality hits in a few days time, one night in Paris and then it's onto the big bird for the trek back home.
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Magoo
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Rubber ducks
Gaz, i was wondering if one of the big cranes was to pick up the big duck would all the water flow down the drain hole. Perhaps we should discuss over coffee.