Blogs from Pays-de-la-Loire, France, Europe - page 6

Saturday. This was our first cloudy day, quite a bit cooler than those preceding. Today we left Paris and travelled to Tours on the Loire River. In the morning, before our departure from Paris, we visited a local market for an hour or so. A sumptuous array of produce was on display, and most of us bought a few tasty treats. I can say that the raspberries and the roasted cashews were both delicious. Fruits, vegetables, seafood, olives, cheeses and much more was available. A number of the boys bought hats – I am sure the stall holder was delighted to sell five hats in one go! We departed Gare Montparnasse just after noon for our 239 km trip to Tours. This took 67 minutes, an average speed of 214 km/h, including two intermediate stops. I’ll ... read more

Well aren’t we the lucky ones. We did not know where Vintagecru was ,only that it was in a little village near Roanne. It seems that if we have landed in a little bit of Paradise. Briennon is a small village dating back to 14thcentury. It is in the middle of a great touring area in the Loire Valley. Surrounded by beautiful scenery, good towns nearby with great shopping, also it is the middle of the summer sales so everything is even cheaper than normal. Sometimes cheaper than Asia, beer is only 30 cents a can. Wine, wine , wine everywhere, no need for Dan Murphys, spoilt for choice at very cheap prices. We have been overwhelmed by how friendly and helpful the local people in Briennon (none of whom speak English) have been to us. ... read more

The six of us piled into the VW around 0900 and headed into town to take another look around. Businesses in France do not open very early so finding somewhere to have breakfast was not all that easy although we finally found a cafe / bar opposite the castle where the friendly barman rustled us up coffees, bread and jams. The Chateau des Ducs du Bretagne dominates the central part of Nantes and we spent around half an hour walking through it taking photos before settling into the cafe located in the central courtyard. There was light rain and at one point a crack of thunder startled us. I could only conclude that Ozzy Osbourne had landed at Hellfest. Our plan was to only watch the two headliners at Hellfest later that evening so we didn't ... read more

We were up nice and early to take the train back to Charles de Gaulle to meet the Swedes. Nik had texted overnight to confirm that they'd finally made it to Paris and would be at Terminal Two waiting for us. We hadn't seen Nik, Elin, Emil and Klara for over a year so there was much excitement and catching up to do. Our first order of business as a group of six was to collect our rental car. It was a brand new VW Sharon seven-seater and we somehow managed to fit all our gear into the boot and one of the seats, leaving Emil to squeeze into the remaining back seat. This didn't take too long to sort out but the GPS was another story altogether. We figured out how to enter Nantes as ... read more

Rained again in the night. Stopped by morning. What a brilliant arrangement ! Kismee stayed in the garage today as there is an excellent, very frequent, tram service right into the city centre from just outside the campsite. We managed to buy some tickets in a machine at the tram station and took the no. 2 to Commerce and then no. 1 to the bridge for Les Machines de L’Ile. All very easy. I found a description for Les Machines de L’Ile as “an artistic, cultural and touristic project”. All of that and more. A set of animatronic amazing and fantastically imaginative machines. First we rode the Giant Elephant. We were really lucky in our timing all day. Arrived at 10:45, bought a ticket, took a ride at 11:00. Absolutely brilliant – riding out of the ... read more