Thursday, October 13, 2011

Day 68. Nantes. Oct 13 2001.

Today we followed the Erdre River into le Pays De La Loire.

We woke early, to fog once more. We got together our gear in a ritual that happens almost by rote now. Heather packs her panniers while still in the tent, getting everything ready before mounting it on its racks. I mount my panniers on the bike and stuff things into them as they surface. Heather, in frustration, has dubbed her bike Jinx, reflecting its cursed nature. Initially I dubbed my bike Herbert, but in view of his red coloring and the fact that he has never yet broken down, I renamed him Fidel.

In addition to being foggy this morning was also very hazy and a strong smell of smoke hung in the air. The French like to burn their garbage as they work and we frequently pass small pyres burning beside farms or on construction sites. It always casts a foul smell for kilometers and it makes it harder to breath.

The passage through the countryside was…typical. It doesn’t change all that much from day to day. We tried to follow the Erdre River but the road into Nantes was all over the place. We stopped for groceries at Suce sur Erdre and then something terrible happened. Heather saw a sign for McDonalds

McDonalds has come to symbolize all the food we are missing from home and I had promised to stop at the next one we saw. Chapelle sur Erdre (the town where the McDonalds actually was) was a beautiful town, despite hosting a fast food joint. We biked into town in search of The House of Grease and passed by their beautifully ornate church. A bride in white and her groom were parading down the street towards their vintage wedding car as we passed. Crowds of people had flooded into the street following the wedding and now stopped to chat and catch up with old friends and family heedless of the traffic trying to get by. I think all weddings most share that phenomenon in common. The bride looked radiantly happy but you could hardly see the groom, lost among the crowd. Another wedding phenomenon I suppose. I wonder if she was keeping her maiden name.

We passed through the entire town with no sign of our goal and I had given up when we saw it looming to our left. We quickly deviated from our course and were soon munching away happily. Such a treat did not come cheaply however, both in material and physical cost. One meal at McDonalds broke our budget for the day and my stomach was soon turning over. Fast Food is food one must build up immunity to.

We hurried on to Nantes. Nantes surprised us as we cycled in. It had a skyscraper. The first we had seen, outside of hideously ugly apartment blocks that were everywhere and equally ugly water towers. Based on the towering building and our newly revised formula for such things we determined Nantes' size to be pretty big. It was also nice, at least from our entry point. The tramways looked extensive and had either well maintained grass or cobblestones between the tracks. The trains themselves universally looked crisp and new.

We hurried on the campground where I was violently ill in the filthiest washrooms we had yet encountered, perhaps one of the low points of my life. The campground itself wasn’t too bad so we reluctantly decided to stay. We set up our tent and headed out to explore the town. We were also looking for an internet café to communicate with everyone back home. Nantes, like Rennes, has lanes set aside for cyclists so we cruised easily into downtown alongside the trams. We cycled along the boardwalk that parallels the river Erdre as it comes into the city. At first we had little appreciation for the city because we were trying, and failing, to find an internet café. But the boardwalk was beautiful. It was cobblestone, separated into lanes for pedestrians and cyclist by marble strips. There were stones inlaid with directional signs embedded in the boardwalk and boats were moored everywhere.


The Isle de Versailles was a lush island in the river, laid out in a Japanese style, with well cared for pines and oaks and a river running in a series of waterfalls down to the Erdre. Off in the distance we could just see the tip of the Cathedral of Nantes peering over the rooftops. Finally, close to where the Erdre disappeared into a tunnel beneath the streets of Nantes, we found our internet stop.

We wrote a long letter to our friends back home and read their messages avidly. Before we knew it two hours had passed and we had once again gone over budget. We left the café feeling very homesick and missing friends and family. It’s hard to hear about events back home because you want to be there to share in all the joys and sorrows. When they say that they miss you a feeling like you're being selfish washes over you. This trip is all about us, exclusively for us and it is hard to reconcile that with being a loving member of a community.

The walk home was very nice, we didn’t feel like biking, but we were both a little down and Heather was feeling more ill than yesterday.

We walked to the memorial at the head of the Road of the 50 Hostages.

These were among those executed in retaliation for the death of a Nazi officer on the streets of Nantes during World War II. The memorial was elegant and simple. Very evocative. I can understand how hard it must be to forget the atrocities the Germans committed in that war. The idea of the European community must be very difficult for many, especially the older generation. It would mean unifying with those who had been responsible for the worst war the world had seen, or at least their descendants. At home we don’t have to live with the consequences of wars. None of our cities have been devastated; few of our people have been executed. It would be nice if things stayed that way. Walking back on the far bank of the Erdre we passed a wall of names of those from Nantes who had died in conflict, “died for patriotism” as the wall itself said. Few things have killed as much as “patriotism.” But at least we get pretty statues out of it.

Returning we saw the Isles de Versailles from the other side. There is a beautiful and strange building on one corner, all square and tipped up on one corner, which we should investigate in the next few days. There is so much to see here! The river had massive boats on it, two stories of open glass dining rooms and observation decks. We had seen the brochure for them and I had assumed they would be like those I’d seen in Paris, small boat what ply the Seine with their cargo of tourists. But these dwarf my memories.

Back at camp French students were taking advantage of the weekend to party, banging drums and singing loudly. I’m glad it’s the off season.

Next Entry: Letter from Nantes
Previous Entry: Day 67. Nort Sur Erdre

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