C & C's Odyssey: Friday July 15

Nantes was a pleasant surprise, our hotel was a great find- it was a chain but independently run it was so cool the chairs in the lobby were bright red seats from a old movie theater and our room was bright orange. The hotel itself was in a very ritzy area lots of Hermes,Coach and watch stores, we saw all these from the outside!! Anyways we had a great supper at a Vietnamese restaurant and had a early night. The next day we went out to Les Machines which is`very hard to explain but it is in the shipyard district and they make these wooden creatures that can move, among the smaller creatures the highlight is a 50 ft elephant that people go on rides on. This place was the strangest, coolest place we've seen and Corey dreams of getting a job there:)
Next to offset Les Machines we went to the Nantes Art gallery which was very good as well. That night we stumbled on a italian restaurant and had fabulous pizza and lasagna for supper. Again we changed our mind on where to go next we debated between Poiteiers and La Rochelle, well we decided on Pointiers and woke up to go to the train station but we wouldnt make the first train so we waited for the next, when we got to the station we found out that all trains to Pointiers were booked up so we ended up going to La Rochelle, which is AMAZING and are so glad we ended up here. Ah La Rochelle it is on the Atlantic coast and is a harbour resort town, so we were a little worried about coming here at 4:00 on a saturday with no hotel booked and as we leave the train station we checked out the fist hotel we saw, right on the new harbour, they wanted 150 euro a night :0 so we moved on and got more worried, next we went to the tourism office and saw about 50 people in there and got a bit more worried, but we some how lucked out and got a room overlooking the grand canal and off the old harbour within our hotel budget-score!. So we were feeling ok and then we turn the corner and see... stages and streets with vendors and balloons and carousels and hear music playing. I dont know how we did it but we stumbled in on the last day of a week long serious music festival in France. It is amazing here!! There are 2 free stage areas and concessions selling food and jewellery ect areas and 1 huge pay stage area, there are probably around 100,000 people here enjoying the festival, it is packed but everyone is in great spirits. So after checking in our hotel we wondered down the harbour, got some frittes and mayo for a snack and enjoyed the music for a bit. Then we checked out old town, which is cobblestoned streets lined with stores and creperies and thousand of tourists, I think Corey was loosing it a bit in the crowds but he won't admit it- haha. We had to stop and get some sugar to keep us going so we went into a very intimating chocolate shoppe- on a side note cheese shops and chochlate shops are serious business here and I feel I dont belong in either cause they are so fancy. Anyways the shop we went into had all chocolates, french jelly candies and macaroons in individual temperature cases that only a employee could open to get you your treats, we opted for a few chocolates and a piece of flur du sel caramel- YUM!!! We then headed for supper but had to wait a bit because most places dont start serving supper till 7 yes 7 is the earliest people start eating, we were hungry tonight so we picked a place we were the only ones eating yet even when we were leaving a t 8:30 most ppl hadnt started supper yet. Supper was great I had mussels fresh from the sea and Corey had salmon ( we took pictures because it was such a great meal) After supper we strolled around and listened to some more music, it stated to rain about 10:00 so we came back to our hotel for the night, but there are still thousands of people out despite the rain, what troopers:) Tomorrow we are off to Pointiers for sure ( we booked ahead) we are there for 2 days to go to the french Theme park Futuroscope.