The famous machine animals of Nantes

Voyage II of the month: Nantes. Nantes is the 6th largest city in France and a major hub of the Brittany region. Only a couple hours by train from La Rochelle, it was an easy weekend destination trip. Once you know its original inhabitants were a Gaulish tribe known as the Namnetes, you can easily determine from where this ancient city derives its name...today, it is also commonly referred to as the "Venice of the West" due to its position on the Loire, Erdre and Sèvre rivers.


Standing inside the beautiful Passage Pommeraye in city center. The indoor passage-way is small shopping mall built in the mid 1800s, and elaborately done with renaissance style sculptures.

Yet another reason Nantes is a cool place to visit...you can meet Mr. Incredible himself.




It seemed that every corner we took had yet another church in view. This impressive church, the Cathédrale Saint-Pierre de Nantes, took 457 years to finish and the people were finally able to celebrate its completion in 1891.

And my favorite part about Nantes by far...Les Machines de L'ile Nantes. Built in a couple warehouses of former shipyards, the concept for this unique museum is the brainchild of two artists, François Delarozière and Pierre Orefice, who visualized a sort of crossroads between the "imaginary worlds" of Jules Verne and the mechanical universe of Leonardo da Vinci. Opened in 2007, the museum includes an exhibit gallery with a collection of mechanical creatures - manta ray, reverse-propelling squid, pirate fish, crab larva -- a workshop off to the side where you can see projects currently under construction, and (the center of attention!) the mechanical elephant.






The mechanical elephant is a whopping 12 meters high (of 39 feet, for all us Americans), made of 45 tons of steel and wood. It's exactly what you might envision while reading about the Sultans of Arabia riding their elephants into town, and for a paltry sum of 6 euros, you too can pretend to be a prince and ride on the elephant.
I didn't ride the elephant, but I did get to ride the smoke-spurting dragon (check it out!). Every animal machine had at least a couple seats for potential riders to hop on, although in the beginning it looked like only the little kids were going to be lucky enough to get the chance. Once I heard "adult volunteer," you can bet I was the first to raise my hand. It looks and feels like these machines were built a 100 years ago, and your job on a seat is a complex assortment of tasks all meant to be done at the same time. It becomes a sort of 'scratch your head and rub your stomach operation,' in which I had to rotate a squeaky lever on my right to make the dragon whiskers move, pull on another lever on my left to make the jaw rotate, and then stomp on a foot pedal for an action which I couldn't quite figure out for the duration of the demonstration.

Île de Ré

Long before I arrived in La Rochelle, I had heard tons about this famous and beautiful island off the coast of my town here. It's one of three islands off the western coast of France by La Rochelle (the others being Ile d'Oleron and Ile d'Aix), and it's fairly accessible regardless of season since you can access it via boat or bridge from the mainland. So my friend and I decided to make a day of it and take our bikes out to see the island.

Île de Ré, much like La Rochelle, flip-flopped from French to English rule since its early settlement. The main port of the island, Saint Martin de Re, was fortified by the French in 1681 as part of a ring of forts and citadels built to protect the military harbor of Rochefort. Now, the city is a World Heritage Site and is very similar in both look and feel to La Rochelle's Vieux Port. It's a naturally popular tourist destination, although I would say it tends to attract the more ritzier crowd than La Rochelle, judging by the number of expensive cars and fancy boats I rode by while touring the island.

Biking up the coastline of the island...nothing but ocean and sand pathways stretching as far as you can see


Chilling with Marta in a couple alcoves in the ruins of the Abbaye Notre Dame de Ré


While biking into the old fortified port town of Saint-Martin, we saw a mini festival going on, complete with carousels and donkey rides. Not sure if these pant-wearing donkeys are a local custom or maybe they were just cold?
The sea is really low in the morning and early afternoon, and the beach was covered with humongous jellyfish (or, at least that's what I think they were). It felt like we were stepping on jellyfish potholes all over the sand.
On our way home!