After breakfast, I waited until the reception was open (9:30 am). Lady 2 was there as well, and we both asked (begged) to be placed somewhere else, which was done without problems. We chatted all the way to our new room, that had windows.
I have been walking around the city with a paper map, and so far it’s not difficult. I can handle it. I finally found the kind of place I was looking for, a café bar with good music and the mood for writing. Le Nid is a rooftop bar designed by a local artist, so that it takes after a nest. There are plenty of egg-shaped seats and, as the bar is at the top of a building, the neck of this herrincrow contours the building. The body also serves as a bar.
So far, I’m fine walking. I don’t think I will need a bike nor the tram. I would like to go to the Jules Verne Museum before tomorrow, the city is enormous. I feel somehow lost, but that’s what I came looking for (and I found it). There is much of a crowd outside, I guess the locals are also taking their vacations and will return when I leave. Again, I am overwhelmed by the size of the city, still smaller than Paris, but with its own personality.
A portuary city, as Lima and Hong Kong, and an industrial city as well, the perfect combination for a boosting economy. Plus, there is an artistic hype going on, as the city supports local artists a lot, and massive pieces of art are on display in several points of the city. So Nantes is a live art gallery. Next to it, La Rochelle just looks like a small city of weekend sea getaways.
As I kept walking around, I thought of Eliana and how she’s do the same thing when she travelled around during her exchange semester. Get off the bus, and walk, walk, walk. Travelling by oneself has indeed a different taste than travelling as a group, or visiting someone in some other city. There’s no need to talk, no need to agree or disagree where to go first. We just go as we feel it. I’m here to discover what has been waiting for me.
To be honest, I know this isn’t the best place in France. But it makes me shift from my normal environment, La Rochelle, and reminds me of something that I must learn: to hang out by myself. If I did this in La Rochelle, I don’t feel the same impact because my flat is a safety dome. It is easy to stay at home and do anything. Way too easy for a person like me who has always preferred the complex way of doing things (sometimes also the prettiest).
I tried to do what some traveller frinds in France usually do, walk around a city on limited money and battery. Well, I can say that I was right about the kind of places I should pick for trips: not the cities.
Great cities are, let’s say, great, for living in them, but not for travelling. At least for me, and for now. For example, I dislike the fact that here in Nantes, planes overfly the city center several times a day! Now that’s one thing that I will remember form here!
Le Nid. 11:30 am, 27/08/2016