I’M NOT NEGLECTING YOU, I SWEAR

Sorry about this serious lack of postage going on here.  Please don’t leave me.

Look, I’ve even got more pictures and things to show you! See?

Triathalon Start

I’m not even lying to you this time.

In case you’re wondering, which you probably are, that is from when I went to the annual triathlon at La Baule. There are pictures of the beach on here somewhere…*

*I may actually be lying.

Anyway, that’s the triathlon there in the distance, just starting the race. Nice day too.

We watched this for a few minutes, at least until the runners (swimmers?) finished that section of the race and began cycling. It was like the Tour de France, but totally less cool. But somehow still pretty cool.

Apres ça, we went for a little drive down the coast/peninsula. I might add at this point that this entire day was with my lovely host-family, not with all the other Batesies. I got a personal tour of sorts ranging from walled cites to the salt flats where they make fleur de sel. All of the following pictures are from that section of the day. Also, fun fact, if you click through (or hover over, i think) there’es a tad of a description on what the photo is. And you can look at all the other photos I took that didn’t make it here. And voila:

Eglise Saint Guénolé

Le Croisic Harbor

Côte Sauvage

Rocher de l'Ours

Guérande

Collégiale Saint-Aubin

Now wasn’t that just lovely!

2011
09/24
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Trip
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WHIRLWIND OF ADVENTURE

Boy oh boy has a lot happened since I last even had the chance to blog. It’s been about a week, hasn’t it? Anyqui, I moved in with my wonderful and hospitable host family and our “real” classes have begun. Fun right? Oh, more fun things. We went to the littlest museum I’ve ever seen, dedicated to Jules Verne. It was oh so lovely, and also steampunk, like our previous elephant.

She can too.

Flying Submarine Airship

The man himself

We went to a FC Nantes game, which was wicked fun. From that, I learned that the worse the team does, the more the Nantesais love to cheer the team on. It’s like they love to hate on them.

Le Match

Le Foot 2

Lastly, we ate more great french food at Amour de Pomme de Terre.

Max likes his cheese too.

Oh, and fun story time. A friend of mine, Olivia, was recounting a wonderful story of one of her first days with her host family. As a preface, I’d like to say that she’d never taken any french before arriving in France. Ballsy, I know. Anyqui, she was telling them all about Hurricane Irene that just hit the US when we left. (Note: the french word for hurricane is ouragan) She told them all about how it destroyed bridges across New Hampshire and wiped out the power to most of New England and how it caused all sorts of havoc. Her host-sisters eyes grew larger and larger and it appeared as if she was in total shock. As it turnes out, Olivia’s pronunciation wasn’t perfect (although it’s great) and her host-sister had thought she had said Requin Irene meaning Irene the shark. A shark that was destroying bridges across New Hampshire and wiping out the power to most of New England. Needless to say, that wasn’t the case.

Unless this of course.

EDIT: So my name is liar because I’m telling lies.  It was Olivia who told this story and graciously called me out on my error.  Heaps of thanks to her for keeping all of the information on the internet true and to make sure everyone is duely credited!

2011
09/13
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STEAMPUNK ELEPHANTS

I don’t think I’d ever have the chance to use the phrase “Steampunk Elephant” but now I’ve got the perfect. That’s pretty much exactly what this exhibit was, Les Machines de L’Île. It began as a bit of street performance art, but they were eventually able to renovate some of the old warehouses in the island in the middle of the 2 branches of the Loire in the middle of Nantes. I’t looks simply spectacular. Eventually, they’ve got plans to put all of these machines, and the ones they plan to build in the future, on a carousel of sorts. Not just any ordinary carousel, but a 3 tiered monstrosity of a carousel. The model (which escaped a photo) looked massive and awesome. If you’re in Nantes, it’s something you surely can’t miss seeing.

Steampunk Elephant

USS Thumbelina

Squid

Terror of the Deep

Sea Serpent

Death Seahorses

Les Branches

2011
09/07
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TALONSAC

Took an early morning trip to Talonsac (pronounced tahh-lawn-seck) this morning, which is similar to a farmer’s market, but it runs everyday. Somehow, it avoided my camera; most likely because I was just wandering around, enthralled by all of the wonderful looking food that every vendor had. I guess I’ll just have to go back. Darn.  Afterwards, we grouped back together to have a picnic of sorts and I actually did get pictures of that.  Everything was so fresh, and crisp.  Food is so different here, and, for the most part, I feel like it’s because people still know where their food comes from.  It doesn’t just come from the grocers.

Oh, and we found the best Salon de Thé in town.

Grazing

Fromage

Fraises

Nom

The proprietess of the salon was the friendliest woman ever. We sat down and just talk with her about what we like in tea and what we wanted to drink today. We went through some categories, such as what colour of tea, then as to aroma (herb, infusion, flower, etc.) then she kind of just picks one based on what she feels like would be good for you. I ended up with a FANTASTIC thé noir aux framboises (black raspberry tea). I’m going back again, for sure.

Salon de The

2011
09/06
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Week 1
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CHÂTEAU DE NANTES

Note: I’ve faced a bit of a backlog here at With Wanderlust, I’ve got post and pictures, but at this point, I’ve got no time to write and format them, so I’m just going to slowly get them up here. Right now, I’m about 5 or 6 days behind, but hey, it could be worse. For now, I’m going to limit the content being once a day. It’ll spread it out a bit more and regularity is good, right? That’s why we eat yogurt.

Anywho… Our aparthotel, featured here, is literally steps away from the beautiful and stunning Château de Duke de Bretagne. So, for one of our morning activities, we visited the museum. It’s a museum, and I’m sure you’ve been to a museum before, so I’m not going into any details. It was nice though, and the castle is beautifully restored. I ended up with just over a hundred photos or so, but here’s just a couple. The rest can be found either on my facebook, or on my flickr account.

Crest of the Duke de Bretagne

Bateau

Oliver at the window

peering down

Nantes circa the industrial era

Tapestry

Figurehead

Courtyard

2011
09/05
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