Rennes and Nantes

Armistice Day

While the US celebrates Veterans Day, France celebrates Armistice Day.  The armistice that ended World War I was on November 11, 1919.  It's a national holiday, so most of the country is off of work.  I decided to take a day off of work at NI (because I'm still working on an American calendar) and make a three day weekend out of it.  We found an excellent fare on the rail company for $34 round trip per person to Rennes, a small city in northwestern France about 200 miles west of Paris.  Rennes is such a small city, so we decided to spend one day there and two days in Nantes, a modern city about an hour (by train, of course) south of Rennes.

 Rennes

We arrived in Rennes Friday night and went to our hotel.  The hotel was about 1/4 mile from the center of Rennes' nightlife, so we bundled up and wandered out to see the city.  Since the city is so compact we were able to just follow the crowds to an area with a bunch of bars.

Rennes is a university town, so it's got more than its fair share of bars.  We wandered into one, got a drink, and hung out for about an hour.

It rained all Saturday morning, but that didn't stop us from exploring Rennes' main market, set in the same streets lined with bars from the previous night.

Roman turret

After we saw all of the market (and tried more free samples than we probably should have) we saw one of the original Roman walls of the city.

Near the far end of the market we found a welcome taste of home: ¡Ay Mexico!  We ate there to fill the missing space in our stomachs hearts for Texmex.  It was delicious. 

A couple of timbered buildings

Rennes has some really cool architecture.  It feels a lot older than Paris because there are timbered buildings all over the place. A lot of the timbered buildings were clearly repaired over time, which showed the city was interested in keeping the old architecture around.  The insides of a lot of shops had exposed timber supports -- some real, some fake -- which gave the city its own unique architectural style.

More cool architecture

Nantes

Nantes is a very different city than Rennes.  It's modern and built up.  What it's missing in the typical small-French-town charm (which Paris desperately tries to cling to) it makes up for in modern amenities.  There may not be cobblestones everywhere, but they're replaced by perfectly smooth pavers.  A lot of the older architecture has been removed in favor of newer buildings, which means that our hotel wasn't drafty and had a full size elevator (although it didn't go to the top floor).

Nantes was one of the major slave-trading cities of Europe for over a century in the 1700s and early 1800s.  The city now has a stirring museum dedicated to the abolition of slavery.

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The elephant!

One of the islands in the middle of the river running through Nantes has a large amusement park dedicated to machines.  The artists there create tons of machines for parades around Nantes.  Every year they create a large fairy tale spread across the city. At the museum there's also a huge animatronic elephant that you can ride.  The elephant holds about 50 people and drives around.  It can move its head and trunk in any direction (independently).  The elephant's legs move and track realistically.  Its eyes open and close. Its ears move, too.  And of course it trumpets.

Oh...yeah...The elephant could pee.  I thankfully didn't see it or get peed on.

Queen Anne was born in this castle

On our second day in Nantes, we went to the castle.  It's been recently renovated, and parts have been rebuilt throughout the centuries, so it's hard to say what's original.  The museum inside details the history of Nantes.  As a maritime city they focus a lot on ships and maps of the river.  It gets a bit old, but it was still worth seeing.

The last thing we did before leaving was go to the Passage Pommeraye.  It's a cool little mall built between two streets in the mid 1800s.  There are a lot of neat stores inside and it's got a big staircase in the middle of it.

Our trip to Rennes and Nantes gave us another new perspective on France.  It also gave us a belly full of crêpes :-).

Crêpey crêpe crêpe crêpe

I'd never been to northwest France, and Catherine had never been to either of those cities (something which is pretty rare for her).  I hope we'll get to travel more in France.  And I definitely wouldn't mind drier, warmer destinations.