Nantes

Nantes, France
14 June 2008

Pictures: http://picasaweb.google.com/dipak.chaudhari1/Nantes20080614

As I’m starting to write this on the train to Angers, our next stop, Keone appropriately comments that “this computer doesn’t have enough memory to capture Nantes.” Excusing his n00b failure to distinguish between memory and storage, I will continue.

Nantes, in short, is a town with a Madeleine River-induced split personality disorder. On the North side, we found what may have been not only Walt Disney’s inspiration for Disney World, but also the very locale that he sought to outdo with his theme park. A shopping district with fashionable designer stores, collectors items, bakeries, ice cream shops, and many “bar a vin” all connected by a cobblestone maze, and interspersed with many “places” and beautiful churches comprised the first part of the town we saw. Keep in mind that the city is quite small, and that to walk from the main train station to our hotel, a distance which spanned the entirety of the main part of town, took no more than 20 minutes.

In the middle of the city, adjacent to the shopping district described above, sat a castle, or a chateaux, that had its own drawbridge and a moat. On the outside of the moat was a elliptical patch of grass, stretching around the entirety of the castle, littered with couples engaged in activities that were sure to eventually lead to the next wave of babies in this tiny town, nestled in Western France. Expecting to find some sort of historic tour inside the castle, we walked across a tiny little metal bridge (what we later found out to be the back entrance - the peasant’s entrance, if you will) to enter the main courtyard.

Inside, we were astonished to find a stage, with a complete, high quality sound system set up for what seemed to be a city-wide children’s musical talent show. As we walked up the stairs to walk around the periphery of the castle (i.e. where the archers stood at Helm’s deep), a number of men dressed in pink pirate costumes, one of them sporting the canonical pirate moustache, ran by. A number of women, dressed like pirate wenches dressed in matching pink outfits, ran by moments later. We are quite sure this was some sort of gay pride parade that they had planned at the castle, but had just then come to realize that their plans were at the same time as a children’s musical concert.

We left the chateaux about an hour and a half after, ambling around the castle at our leisure, and headed toward the Madeleine. That this town was some sort of dream-like paradise was apparent when we were walking along the pavement, rollerbladers and groups of cycling racists passing us, the previously mentioned castle towering on our left, and a very modern tram system speeding by on the rails to our right. There even seemed to be light din throughout all of the areas we had walked, making the town seem even happier.

The Madeleine was quite a ways away, and we had to cross a bridge over a smaller river to get to it. As soon as we crossed this first bridge, we were struck by how quickly the general noise of merriment had vanished. We kept walking through this side of the street only to find every restaurant, pharmacie, and store closed. There was no one walking about, and the few characters we saw seemed quite shady. Keone admonished me for wanting to take out my camera to get some pictures for fear of giving ourselves away as tourists, although I’m sure that our American accents and dress had already done that. We walked for about a kilometer over to the river, but what we saw was far from the idyllic landscape that I had built up in my head – instead of restaurant boats floating down with many people gently strolling about the banks of the river, we saw only an empty parking lot on the other side, one side of which entirely covered with graffiti, overlooking a murky, ominous looking river on which there were no ducks, let alone restaurant boats. Scampering over to the nearest tram station, we breathed a sigh of relief as we made our way back to the happy part of town again. Nantes seemed unreal.

We milled about the shopping area some more, picking up two bottles of wine – a local Muscadet White for Euro 6.50 and a Coteaux D’ancenis Cabernet Red that was about Euro 4.00. The last thing I would expect from a trip to the Loire Valley, in which the town of Nantes sat, was to be drinking from a plastic cup in a hotel room watching a “Les Simpson” marathon, but that was exactly what we did, and the experience was not depressing, as it may sound.

We woke up at 9:40am, missing our train ticket that was for 9:00am. After eating as many fruits, dried fruits, and jams from a breakfast (fit for a King) for which we had unwillingly paid Euro 8.00, we walked over to the station, and boarded a train for our next stop in the Loire Valley – Angers.