My first visitors and the day at La Baule

This weekend, I finally had my first out-of-towners come to visit me in Nantes. My friends Christine and Mira are UW kids like me, but they're both studying in Paris this quarter and, since they're lucky enough to have long weekends, they decided to take a train over to the west coast to pay me a little visit. I picked them up at the train station on Friday after my class and the fun, lazy weekend began.

On Friday night, the plan was to go and see Crimson Daze, a french Led Zeppelin cover-band who were playing at a bar on the Ile de Nantes. Unfortunately, by the time we got there the place was too full and they wouldn't let us in. From what I heard through the doors, however, they were pretty darn good. That plan having been foiled, we walked down a few doors to a restaurant called "My Asian Time" and got some food. I ordered pork egg-rolls, which has been a strange obsession for me in France. Egg-rolls here are good, but there's a slightly different element that I can't quite put my finger on. I think maybe they cook them with lard or have something resembling lard actually inside them, because there's a different taste and texture to them, but either way I order egg-rolls in France way more often than I do in the states. It's a little ridiculous. However, the food was good, and I just take pride in being able to say that I've eaten at "My Asian Time" since the name itself is hilarious.

After some good old 'Asian Time', we sampled a little bit of the nightlife in the Bouffay area, but we called it a fairly early night and headed back to the dorm. Let me tell you, sleeping with three people in this tiny room is not exactly easy, but we managed.

Saturday turned out to be basically just a wandering day. I wanted to give Mira and Christine a general idea of the town, since it was basically their only full day here, so we walked all around downtown, looked at the shops and cafes, etc. I finally achieved my personal goal of getting the saturday market before it closed, since I hadn't yet been to it, since I'm rarely able to drag myself out of bed on Saturdays. Granted, we only made it for the last half hour or so that it was open. After perusing the goods but not buying anything, we went and got some kebabs and met up with Ciara, Ariel, Brent and Kevin for even more wandering. First we walked by the Galerie Lafayette, and out in front of it, there was a band of street performers singing songs, so we stopped to listen and actually ended up being rooted to the spot for quite a long time - they were pretty good! Mira and I split the cost of their CD, actually, so now I can listen to "La Famille Patchounarouf" whenever I want. It's the typical french street-music that you'd think of, complete with accordion and a guy drumming on a box - very satisfying. Plus the fact that many of the guys were smoking while they were singing and playing made it seem all the more stereotypically French to me.

Here's a video of "La Famille Patchounarouf" singing in the streets of Nantes, taken with my digital camera. Sorry if it's a little shaky, but hopefully you'll still enjoy it.

After watching for a while, we strolled around a little more and I took Mira and Christine back to the pet shop where I last encountered the puppies that broke my heart and made me want to smuggle one into my dorm. I also decided to document the pet store so that everyone else can see what I'm talking about. The pet shop has two cages for puppies, two glass cases full of cats, and a bunch of birds, rats, mice, hamsters, turtles and, perhaps one of the more unusual animals, a white squirrel. When we went this time, the squirrel was running tirelessly on his exercise wheel and he seemed like he was on a mission. It makes me wonder what kind of people actually buy squirrels for pets, and what they do with them. In the cage of puppies, there was one little french bulldog who would not take his eyes off of me and it made me want to pick him up and hug him. Since he cost around 1,300 euros, I've decided that I'm going to have to break into the pet shop at night and steal him, and then secretly keep him in my dorm. There really isn't any other choice.

Seriously, how could you resist that face?

After having our hearts broken into a million pieces, we kept on going down the road past the Chateau des Ducs de Bretagne, which I already have some picture of on here, and we walked around in the Jardin des Plantes. The garden was beautiful, and it had a few little artistic displays, and even a few random mini-zoo exhibits of deer and birds. The opening display was that of a business suit with a bunch of flowers for a head, surrounded by dress shoes, which were also filled with flowers. Another display showed various different-colored belts with flowers arranged inside of them. We were lucky that the weather was so nice, it was really pleasant to walk around for a bit, and then sit on some benches and chat.

The opening display in the Jardin des Plantes.

I couldn't tell what this fruit was, but I thought it looked lovely so I snapped a picture.

After walking around all day, we headed back to the dorms and combined our forces to cook a spaghetti dinner which was delicious. After a satisfying meal, everyone congregated in my room to watch some stand-up comedians on Youtube. We didn't do much else and tried to go to bed early since a lot of people had to be up early the next day. However, Jim Gaffigan and Jerry Seinfeld are good enough for me on a Saturday night.

On Sunday, I went with Mira, Ciara, Kevin and Anh to the city of La Baule, which is a little touristy town right on the Atlantic. (Well, I guess it's not so much little as it is filled with condo-buildings, but other than condos, there's not much else.) Christine was going to go, but she hadn't slept very well the night before and decided to stay behind. So Mira and I left her in the dorm and went to meet everyone else in the lobby, and we went on our way. The train from Nantes to La Baule only takes about an hour, but I slept for most of it since public transportation tends to make me sleepy. (This also could have been a side-effect of my having slept on the floor that night...) We reached La Baule at about 11am and walked straight down to the beach. The weather was deceiving in that it was sunny, but still cold. So we sat in the sand staring at the water, praying for the sun to warm us up just a little bit. After a while, Kevin and Anh went on a walk and said they'd "be right back", when in fact they went on a 2 hour walk all the way down the beach. Myself, Mira and Ciara just laid in the sand and fell in and out of sleep and people-watched.

My view for most of the entire Sunday on the beach at La Baule.

After Kevin and Anh finally returned, we decided it was time for a meal, and so we found our way to the 'downtown' area of La Baule. It turns out that 'downtown' is basically one or two blocks on the main road, and just about everything was closed since it was sunday. We did find a creperie that was open, called Le Chat Gourmand. I cannot stress how cat-themed this place was. They had a flashing cat-head sign outside, murals of cats on every wall, all-cat dishes and cups, and even a badly tempered feline who roamed freely around the restaurant, but got nasty if you tried to pet him, as Ciara found out the hard way. Their food was pretty good, though - I got a giant omelette with ham and cheese and it was very satisfying. We walked around some, sat on the beach to pass time, and eventually found a park to walk through. The park wasn't particularly exciting, however. It had an amphitheater, but there was a group of awkward french teenagers being mischievous there, so we opted for walking on a mysterious path through the woods and back around to the front instead.

A pinnacle of sand that I constructed to pass time on the beach.

After wandering around the deserted town, we passed a little more time on the beach, then decided to eat before catching our train. After debating endlessly which of three places we should eat at, we decided on a pizza stand where I got a surprisingly delicious chicken curry pizza. Afterwards, since we still had time to kill and everyone had a sweet tooth, we found a cute family-owned creperie. As we walked up, you could see the owner through the window, reading a newspaper at a little table. When he saw us outside, he quickly got up and scampered around turning on all the lights and preparing everything for us since we were obviously the first (and probably only) customers of the night. Once he realized we spoke English, he tried timidly to practice with us, and his wife watched from the kitchen, beaming with pride. Their son was sitting at a table next to us playing some sort of hand-held video game, but after a few minutes, he retreated to his room. The crepes there were AMAZING. I got the "After Eight", which is a crepe covered in melted chocolate and served with two scoops of mint ice cream. To wash it down, I had a delicious mug of hot chocolate and was completely satisfied. With full bellies, we all plodded our way back to the tiny train station to find that the train was a half an hour later than we had thought. But it came eventually and all was well.

In all, the day at La Baule was successful and relaxing, but considering the fact that we got in at 11am and didn't catch our train until almost 9pm, it was a little boring. Everything was closed and it was too cold to really be able to enjoy the beach. Next time, I'm sure just a few hours will suffice, and hopefully with better weather.

Mira and Christine were scheduled to leave at 8:45pm on Monday night, but due to missing a tram by literally seconds, they missed their train back to Paris and had to switch to a 5:30am train this morning. The plan was to stay up watching movies, but I ended up being the only one awake after watching only "The Yellow Submarine". It's a good thing I stayed up, too because the girls ignored their alarm the first time around and would've slept right through their train. So at 4:30 I woke them up and called a cab to the train station for them. This was frustrating because the man on the other end of the phone was very unfriendly. Whenever I didn't understand something, he would simply yell the same thing, instead of explaining or phrasing it differently. When the call came that the cab was there, we wandered out into the rain to find no cab in front of the building. So I had to call the cab and ask him where he was, and then guide him to the front door of the dorm where we were standing - shivering, yawning and wet. Keep in mind, this is about 5am and I was trying my hardest to explain where we were in French. It makes a decent story now, but at the time it was very unpleasant.

The girls eventually made it back to Paris, however, and I went back to my room and fell dead asleep within minutes. When I woke up, I had the joy of running all over downtown Nantes, trying to get my residence card so that I can legally live here for a year. However, that is a story for another time, since - even after the hours spent going from place to place today - my card is not ready yet. I will be picking up that story later on, but in the meantime, stay tuned because my parents will soon be guest-starring since they are coming to visit in just a few days!

And, as usual, I took more pictures than I cared to squeeze into the blog, so if you want to see a slideshow of the pictures I took this weekend, click here.

In the meantime, I hope you're enjoying the blog so far, and thanks for stopping by!