La Rochelle - Day 55

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I left Tours for La Rochelle in the mid-afternoon. I was on TGV trains the entire way, so the trip was quite pleasant and I got in just before dusk. Earlier in the day I had drawn a small map to help guide me to the hostel because, as I suspected, the tourist information was closed and the hostel was a mile or so from the station.

The hostel itself was relatively easy to find using my basic map. I just walked to the waterfront and followed that all the way. I ended up walking past an enormous marina, complete with cranes for removing boats from the water. I even got to see the machine that transports the boats from the crane to their winter berth (on stilts) in use, which was pretty cool.

I checked in to the hostel and the first thing I noticed were the 50 or so little kids running around screaming. Wonderful, I thought. It would have been ok if they were somewhere else in the hostel, but no, all the kids were staying along the same corridor as me. I guess I should expect that at one of these institutional hostels. Besides being noisy, they liked to run down the hallway banging on doors as they went by. To top it off, the fire alarm went off a couple minutes after I got into the room, so we all got to stand around outside for about 15 minutes before they turned it off.

Fed up with the noise and chaos, I went to find some food. I asked at reception, and they pointed me in the direction of a nearby convenience store. I got there, and picked up some chicken and bread to make a sandwich. I also got a can of Guinness. I considered taking my dinner back to the hostel, but I wanted to wait a while for the little punks to go to bed, so I went over to the waterfront and sat listening to the ocean lap against the concrete retaining wall while I ate.

After dinner, I followed the waterfront all the way back in to town. La Rochelle is famous for the three towers that guard the entrace to the old harbor. In times past, they used to run a chain between the two towers immediately adjacent to the harbor entrance as a simple, but effective, means of preventing unwanted ships from entering. Now, there's no chain, and the inner harbor just has a couple boats left.

All of the towers were fantastically illuminated at night, and the town itself was very pretty. I spent a couple hours just walking from one end to the other along the water before heading back to the hostel.

When I got back, I was happy to find that it was past the little kids' bedtimes, and they were nowhere to be found. My room had been empty when I left, but when I got back I had a new roommate -- a Colombian guy. He spoke perfect english, having gone to school in the US. We talked for quite some time about politics, and America before calling it a night.

The next morning I got up pretty early and hiked back into town to check it out during the daytime. I actually think the towers and harbor were a lot more impressive at night. Around noon I grabbed my bag and walked to the train station to catch a train south.

Stay tuned for Bayonne.

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Photos

The Two Towers
Somehow I thought they were more impressive in the movie...