In the morning I went to the Machines of the Isle of Nantes, an exhibition created by two artists which has a bunch of fantastical animal machines. Jules Verne was born in Nantes, so the Machines are supposedly inspired by his books. The exhibition is in a couple of old buildings in the shipyards, and the weather that day was suitably wet and dreary. Inside was cool though, mechanical animals based on real ones.
Every few minutes they have a person or two come and do a demonstration with one of the machines, so you can pass through watching them all in an hour or so. When I got there I didn't realise, so some of them are inactive in my photos. After I'd seen a couple of the shows I didn't bother staying for the rest coz no French and stuff...
Ant with toddler-sized seat.
Weird caterpillar thing.
Slightly bigger ant, with controls for various things at each seat. The demonstrator controls it remotely, but the visitors move the mandibles and the legs and so on as they wish.
This was quite cool (though hard to see). They had a guy pretending to be a drunk old aviator climbing on the thing while it was giving a demonstration of early flight.
Display of carnivorous animals.
Hand-sized venus fly trap.
They asked people around the sides if they wanted to go up on the seats on the walls. I was all over that. Sadly the tree thing in the middle didn't really do anything but look cool.
But we got a nice show of the big bird thing!
It "flew" past us...
... and turned around on under its fancy crane.
I also walked over to the other building next door, which serves as a workshop for the.. museum? At the moment they're building a bunch of huge sea creatures for some outdoor exhibition, but they were all "no photos," so no photos...
The exit for the whole thing is walking along a huge version of the tree thing I was above before. Kinda cool fusion of industrial design and nature.
There's also a 45 ton elephant on wheels that you can go on a ride on, but it was pretty expensive. I wanted to at least get a photo but it was raining a bit and god knows where it was. I though the whole Machines of the Isle thing was really cool, seems like a decent way to get kids interested in maths/science/engineering, though it's obviously not the most practical or likely application for the majority of people. Was also neat trying to work out how the damn things work...
After the Machines, I walked back to the city and got lunch, then started walking to the Botanic Gardens, which were meant to be really nice. I made it about halfway there before I was at the chateau and decided I couldn't be bothered walking in the rain more, and was also quite tired. So I dropped in to the chateau instead.
Saw this guy on the way to the gardens/chateau. Could be a bit of fun to climb.
You had to pay a bunch to enter the chateau, but you could walk around the courtyard and the walls for free, so I just did that. Photo of gilded well (!).
Pretty fancy castle in the middle of a city.
Backside of the chapel.
Frontside of the chapel.
The arrowslits everywhere reminded me that it was, indeed, a castle. Most of them pointed towards sideroads outside, so the other buildings are probably pretty old too.
Weird maze thing made of sticks.
Main entrance to the place, complete with portcullis and drawbridge.
The next day I got the train down to Bordeaux, the first of several places I've since been where it was the same/cheaper to stay in a dorm than camping, and much more convenient. So I stayed in what seemed to be the only hostel in town. In the morning I went for a wander round the city.
I like Bordeaux more than the other cities I'd been, in the centre anyway. There's huge long bits of cobbled pedestrian streets with all kinds of shopping and restaurants and shit, with big squares and historical buildings/monuments everywhere. Walking along the river was nice too.
Can't remember what this thing was commemorating, but it was pretty impressive.
There was one of those marine statues on either side from here.
I went and visited the botanic gardens here, but almost nothing was in bloom, so the most interesting bit was the wall outside:
The next day I got the train to Bayonne to stay with a friend I met in Nicaragua. When I get there there was some sort of Medieval Faire going on, which was pretty neat (and most of the vendors were speaking Spanish so I could actually understand them). The city itself was really cool, loads of houses like these guys in windy little alleys and along the river.
The day after I got to Bayonne we went for a daytrip to some mountains just over the border into Spain with one of Manuella's friends. It's still pretty crazy to me that you can just drive into another country without even noticing. All the roadsigns in both countries around there are in some mix of French, Spanish, or Basque, so there's a chance you need to know the name of your destination in all three. Also just into Spain there's at least one town that seems to be made of liquor stores and tobacconists, as they're cheaper than in France. Probably common across Europe I suppose.
So we got to the place and walked an hour or so through some ridiculously green forest, though it was stupid cloudy and we couldn't really see a lot.
Sheeps tricked me into thinking they were cows with the bells.
We had a picnic at the top, then hung out up there for a couple of hours.
After a while the cloud cleared up and we could see the ocean. Biarritz should be on the right somewhere.
On the way back to Bayonne we stopped at St.-Jean-de-Luz for the Tuna Festival. The town was packed with people and musicians, and the docks lined with rows of tables next to kitchens in marquees. A few euros bought a fat tasty tuna steak, a cake, and a glass of wine. Delicious!
Then another stop in Biarritz to watch the sunset, and finally back to Bayonne to sleep...
The next afternoon we went with some of Manuella's other friends to camp out near the end of a Tour de France stage for two nights. There was maybe 20 people in our campsite, which was surrounded by other campsites and campervans, and these guys were pretty fuckin well-prepared; stove, fridge/freezer, beer tap, TV to find out how long until the cyclists pass by.
We spent the first night drinking and singing (though not in any language I speak, that was fun.. Though I did give a rather stunning rendition of Pokarekare ana. Can't even remember most of the national anthem). In the morning we were treated to this view of a sea of fog:
Looking up towards the end of the stage.
Our campsite.
I spent most of the day reading and drinking and eating delicious things, along with playing some game that resembled a cross between petanque and tenpin. Pretty good day, really.
The next day all the fences were set up for the stage, the cops were in place everywhere, and a horde of fans had arrived. Sometime in the afternoon a caravan of sponsors' vehicles passed, throwing out all kinds of free junk, and then the wait for the racers began.
This guy came past first, a couple minutes before the next people.
Then his bros on the motorbike. Was kinda surprised there was only one or two bikes like that.
Afterwards, all the other racers came past in groups or pairs. The best bit was that when they came around the corner below us they'd just been climbing, and the forest uphill opened up, so almost all of them looked up towards the left, and then this look of dismay crossed their faces as they realised they had another 1.5km or so of climbing to go. Poor fools. When all the racers had passed, we struck camp and headed back to Bayonne.
The following day I went to wander Bayonne a bit, and visit the Basque Museum. The Basque country straddles the border between Spain and France on the Atlantic side, where the traditional culture is still strong. At various points in history the Spanish and French governments have tried to suppress the Basque language (Euskara, in Euskara), but now in Spain there's an increased drive to save the language. Not so much in France, apparently...
Anyway, the museum was good, filled with old-school Basque stuff and a bunch of info about their culture. Should've taken notes...
Some kind of transporter.
Sweet old gravestones.
A press for wine, or cider. These bitches love them some cider...
The kitchen sink.
Cool old keys.
Some of the craftsmanship on the traditional old stuff was amazing.
Ballin' on his shield.
There was an exhibition of this guy's paintings. I just thought he had a cool selfie.
A couple of days later it was goodbye to France, as I headed to Bilbao, in Spain. I still miss the baguettes :(
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