Birthdayshambles

I was going to do nothing for my birthday - last year was a three city, two country extravaganza, but that was my thirtieth. Liz, however, was having none of this and proposed that my friends back in Tours chip in to buy me a train ticket back "home" to celebrate together. Somewhere in there, a side-trip to Nantes (yes, all the way on the other side of the country) got tacked on - mostly, I suspect, because that's where Liz's boyfriend lives, but I was fine to go with the flow.

So the plan was a quiet, tame night in Tours on Friday, followed by a big one in Nantes on the following night. I think you can all guess how that went down. The champagne was flowing at Liz's and we ended up at our familiar old haunts of the Pale and the Beer Academy, as we have so many times before. It was kind of bitter-sweet being back in Tours. It's not quite "where everybody knows my name", but there's something to be said for feeling like a regular instead of a tourist when you walk in somewhere. Of course, more than the pubs, I miss my mates though! They are some of the funnest girls you'll ever meet, very difficult to replace!

That is Liz's hand by the way!

Bubbles!

Basically, all my photos were a series of me with different random guys. I find the expression on the guy second from left priceless!

It's just unfocused drunk face, but I like the sort of innocent, young look I have going on here

Firstly: I like how the only people looking at the camera are the dudes in the background. Secondly: who is this man? Ignore the unflattering profile, and look at us having A Moment. I think he might be my soul mate and I missed it 

Look, he's even (presumably) laughing at something witty and hilarious I said. Unfortunately, he's only in these two photos and I have no idea who he is. Hence I'll die alone ;)

So, surprise, surprise, we ended up staying out all night, and the next day was a bit of a shambles. I woke up thinking I'd lost my phone, which I was pretty bummed out about, since it's an iphone my sister gave me and I've only had for about 3 months. Happy ending though, since it turned out Caro had it (for some reason). However, she couldn't let me know at first since I was with Liz, who had lost her entire handbag!

I was feeling a little under the weather, but not terrible, but Liz was dying. The plan had been for Liz and Mel to take a carpool to Nantes, with the rest of us driving in Philippa's car. 12 pm came round, and Liz was in no shape to turn up for the carpool, stranding poor Mel as well. Using GPS, Liz thought she tracked down her phone (and hence bag) to the Beer Academy, so that was the good news. The bad news was it's a club, so presumably wouldn't be opening till the evening. We decided to tell the rest of the girls (and Chris) to set off by car & Liz and I would take the train to Nantes later. In the end, there was still no response from the Beer Academy, so I left Liz feeling sorry for herself and took a train at 5 pm, getting to Nantes around 7.30.

By the time I turned up, my birthday champagne that Marion, my kiwi friend who now lives in Brittany, had brought for me had already been drunk (boo), but I suppose that's my fault for turning up late. After a couple more bottles while we got ready to go out (not very much of which was consumed by me, since I was still feeling slightly sorry for myself), with still no sign from Liz, we headed into town for dinner around 10 pm.

As anyone who's ever tried to eat late in France can tell you, this was a bad idea. There's really a very small window in which you can hope to be served. Before 7 = too early. You probably can find some food, but they'll probably spit in it since you're clearly an uncultured tourist oik. After 10 = nearly impossible. Granted, we were trying to get a table for 6 and every restaurant seemed to be busy, but I can't even tell you how many places we went into unsuccessfully. One particularly dickish restaurateur even refused to suggest any other restaurants that might serve us because "he couldn't guarantee any other restaurants used fresh produce". Dude, we're not coming back to your restaurant anyway, don't be a twat. Anyway, *finally* we managed to find a Moroccan place, where the service was chaotic but the food was okay, and most importantly, they let us eat there. Apparently, the guy on the next table to us spent the whole meal making fun of us all in French, but whatever, I couldn't hear him. Once again though people, some of us do speak more than one language.

To our great pleasure, we learned that Liz was on her way after all. She searched the Beer Academy from top to bottom for her handbag, but was defeated. Finally, with a heavy heart, she popped into the Pale, which is just around the corner. The barman there took one look at her and produced her handbag from behind the corner, with everything safe and sound. The question is how we all managed to leave the Pale at 2 am and go to the Beer Academy and none of us (Liz especially) ever noticed her handbag was missing? Bless her, even with a killer hangover, she got into her car and drove all the way to Nantes, turning up around 12.30 am to meet us in a pub. Not quite sure how she managed that!

From there, we went to a horrible club. It was soooooo crowded and unpleasant, you basically couldn't move at all. Since I was still not quite on top party form, I decided I couldn't cope with this place, and we all went home. Felt a bit bad since everyone had more or less been dragged to Nantes on my behalf and we saw basically nothing of the city, but I did say they could have stayed out without me.

Caro and Mario(n) in Nantes

Chris and Mel in Nantes

So the next day, basically we had time to get up, have some more girly chats while getting ready in the hotel, have lunch, and then it was time for my train back to the other side of France again. I think it was something like a 1400 km round trip for not a lot of Nantes time, but most importantly, I got to celebrate with some awesome people!

France vs. Ryanair - who can screw my move up more?

So much to catch up on! My whole trip to Italy/England, for one. But let's delve into the more immediate past and cover the Metz move first, and then once I have a proper internet connection and can upload photos, hopefully my memories of the Italy trip won't be too hazy.

Talking of proper internet connections, I am still without home wifi. Which is ridiculous, since I am staying with the same operator (Alice, name and shame) and keeping the box etc., so I don't know what can possibly take so long. I probably should have taken the opportunity to switch (especially since they are charging me a reconnection fee and locking me into another year-long contract, grrr), but with everything that was going on, it was just simpler not to have one more thing to worry about changing providers. Tonight I paid 4,95€ for hotspot access via SFR. If you're ever tempted by this, don't bother. The site worked perfectly well when it came to registering an account and paying, and then ever since it's been the world's slowest and crappiest connection. I wasn't too surprised that I wasn't able to get on to stream coverage of today's F1 qualifying (would have been nice though), but I would have thought I'd at least be able to browse ordinary websites without the connection failing every two seconds. Not so. (Thus writing this in Open Office and hoping I can upload it successfully.)

Anyway, let's go back to the Tuesday before last, when I had to get up at 3.30 am to go to the airport for my flight back to Tours (mummy and daddy kindly both accompanying me). Everything went very smoothly – checked in, through security, on to a very sparsely-occupied plane and in to the very front row (ahhh leg room). A short time after that, the pilot came on to say there were air traffic control strikes in France, so we weren't going to make our slot. Ruh-roh. But we were going to keep sitting on the runway and go through the safety demonstration etc. because we could be taking off at any time. Shortly thereafter, it emerged that there was a problem with one of the windows in the cockpit and from my vantage point at the front of the plane, I could see a lot of coming and going of technicians changing the window (in fact, they left the plane door open the whole time and I was freezing my arse off). None of this was announced over the PA system for a long while until the captain eventually came on to say that they had been doing maintenance, but it would be finished before our slot opened up. Then the next thing we heard... "sorry, the flight has been cancelled because Tours airport is closing in an hour for the remainder of the week and our flight time would be 1 hour 5 minutes and they won't hold it open another 5 minutes for us". There definitely were strikes in France, but whether we could have gone if it hadn't been for the window problem who knows.

So we were offloaded and shepherded back through to pick up our baggage and go through security with very little direction on where to go. I managed to be one of the first in line for the Ryanair rebooking desk and promptly burst in to tears when I was told that the next flight to Tours wasn't until Saturday (from London Stansted, at that). Reminder : this was Tuesday, I was moving across France on Thursday and starting a new job on the following Monday. The options I was given were waiting for Saturday and going to London Stansted, travelling from Manchester to Liverpool and catching a plane from there to Limoges the next day, or rebooking with a different airline. And « of course », while they would pay for the flight from Liverpool to Limoges, getting from Manchester to Liverpool, paying for a hotel, and going from Limoges to Tours was my responsibility. The woman also declared that she couldn't tell me whether Ryanair would refund me if I bought a ticket with a different airline, since "she didn't work for Ryanair". I pointed out that this situation must have arisen before, so she must have some idea – and indeed, it was surely part of her job to know such information, but to no avail.

Still crying, I followed other passengers over to the FlyBe desk and forked over around 200€ for a ticket on the next plane to Nantes (including a £40 charge for my luggage, of course). By this time, the line for the Ryanair desk was a lot longer, so instead of queueing up again for the refund of my ticket (which, bought months ago, wouldn't have covered half of the 200€ anyway), I decided just to go through back through security for the second time this morning and try to sort out the money later (still haven't got on to that). It was still only about 9.45 in the morning by this stage, although I'd already been up a good 6 hours, but I decided I might as well kill half an hour before going to my gate with a cider at the bar. I ordered a half just to be sure, drank it pretty quick, so time for another half, then another... By the time I got to the gate at 10.20 or so, I'd downed a pint and a half of cider in around 20 minutes and was a teensy bit tipsy. Luckily enough though I had an exit row seat on a tiny little plane next to a grumpy old man, so I behaved myself on our flight to Nantes, which went off without a hitch.

I'm not sure what time I made it to the train station in Nantes, maybe about 2 pm, but I then discovered that the strikes in France weren't confined to the air traffic controllers – the trains were also striking. This meant there wasn't another train back to Tours until some time after 4 pm, and it was a slow TER train. It wasn't that expensive, on the upside, but it only got me to Tours just after 7 pm, instead of 10 am as originally planned. I lost the whole day, much-needed for moving purposes, and I had to push back my leaving drinks since I got home and had to get a load of laundry out of the way so it could dry before my move. I was so tired that I thought I'd only have the energy to stay out for an hour or so, but I did actually manage to stay from about 9 to after midnight, although it was a very quiet affair.

Turned out there were more hitches to come before I was comfortably installed in the new apartment...

Nantes & St Nazaire photos

Setting out for Nantes



Me and R at the Cuban bar (rhymes!) *Everyone* stared while we had our photo taken... I sepia'd it because the flash was not doing my skin tone any favours...



At the creperie where we had dinner our first night in Nantes



Inside the church of St Nicholas at Nantes - we saw two big, fancy churches as well as the cathedral (didn't go inside one of them). Pious crowd in Nantes apparently



The former LU factory - they make biscuits



Passage Pommeraye, fancy shopping arcade in Nantes



Dragon-throttling statue on the tomb of Anne the Duchess of Bretagne



The cathedral



In front of the Chateau at Nantes



The one photo R and I *did* manage to get together at the chateau. I KNEW my dress was billowing, too - looking nice and preggers



Inside the museum - plate from the French Revolution depicting, for some reason, the Revolutionary Patriot wearing a nappy (?)



Pretty sure this guy has hijacked the bike and is offering the alarmed woman a pre-rape biscuit



Whereas this fellow is surely sitting down to feast on a baby



Doing my best pose by the banks of the Loire in Nantes



And again. This was what I was wearing for my encounter with the street kids (see yesterday's post) - don't think I could look less like a homeless punk if I tried...



Ol' pole-head at St Nazaire.



The beach at St Nazaire



The American monument, built after WWI, destroyed by the Nazis then rebuilt after WWII

Nantes & St Nazaire

Just back from a long weekend, a little bit browner and happy that I saw the sea, even if only for a few hours. Lots to catch up on!

My friend Ruth arrived safe, sound & on time with Ryan Air (gasp!) on Friday, and it was lovely to see her smiling face again at the airport! The last time we caught up, as some readers may remember, was in Milan for the Grand Prix last September - I can't believe that was 11 months ago! That means I'm coming up on a year in Europe!

After dropping R's bags off chez moi, we headed out for a small taste of Tours nightlife and a lot of chatting. A cider, a delicious pizza (each), a small carafe of wine and a cocktail later (um, over several hours...), we called it a night and headed home for some beauty sleep before a busy day on Saturday. We started off hitting the shops in Tours, so that R could get some vital French shopping done. Highly successful inasmuch as R made some lovely purchases and I didn't buy anything. Then it was off to the station for the train to Nantes, via Angers.

We arrived about 3 pm, armed with the address of the hotel and nothing more. No taxis, no tourist office, nothing... After a bit of milling about at the taxi stand, we decided to wing it and try to make our way to the hotel on foot, after consulting a very vague map at the tram station. Pleased to say that we successfully navigated our way to the hotel, and this was but the first of our navigational triumphs! We all know how directionally-challenged I am, and given that I had to correct R a few times on which way to go, it's probably safe to say we're pretty much equally blessed in that department (although ONE of us is a geographer!), so this was an achievement!

I can't remember what we did after checking in, I think we just wandered the streets for a bit - the hotel was pretty close to the central shopping/bar district - and then went back to the hotel for a rest (I fell asleep, whoops) and shower before dinner. Another great meal - galettes followed by crepes, very Breton. Galettes and crepes are essentially the same thing, I think the difference is galettes are made with wholemeal flour and crepes with white flour. My galette was filled with reblochon cheese, creme fraiche, lardons, and potatoes mmm, and then the crepe was chocolate almond yum! This was accompanied by a small pitcher of very nice rosé each, whole meal came to about 15 euros I think, bargain. We then stopped in at a Cuban bar and had about 4 mojitos each, if memory serves. Finally, somewhere in France that makes decent mojitos! Normally (as in Prague), they are made with table sugar instead of sugar syrup, which manages to shoot straight up the straw and completely coat the inside of your mouth unless you spend about 10 minutes stirring first.

Sunday was our sightseeing day, so we were up earlyish and headed out to the chateau of the Dukes of Britanny, which we had passed on the way from the train station the day before. This was very large and imposing outside, but inside was actually made up of several smaller buildings. You could go in and walk around the grounds and up on the ramparts for free, which was nice. We made the mistake of asking some old dude to take our photo - first he made us switch sides, then said 'I see nothing', switched us back, still said he saw nothing, fiddled with the camera for about 5 minutes and then when Ruth told him 'oh well, just hold the camera out and click', I swear to god he just pretended to press the button. In any case, no photo was taken and we were left wondering whether we asked an actual blind man to take the photo... We then had to wait for him to shuffle off before we could ask someone else to do the job.

Inside one of the castle buildings was a museum on the history of Nantes. Very comprehensive. I think we had definitely peaked by about room 20, and were somewhat disheartened that there were still 12 rooms to go! To be fair, it was well done, and there were definitely interesting things, like the history of the slave trade in Nantes. I knew that there were slaves in the French Caribbean, but if you'd have asked me how they got there, I probably would have said the Americans or maybe even the British sold them to the French colonists. Turns out that Nantes was a major player in the slave trade, and that there were even slaves held in mainland France. Nantes was so into slave trading that they went right on doing it for about 50 years after the slave trade was officially made illegal. I could have lived without quite so much information about the rise and fall of Nantes as a port and industrial hub, on the other hand...

After lunch, we checked out the cathedral, which looked all shiny and new - turns out it has been very majorly restored after a huge fire in the 1970s. Restoration work only finished two years ago. The façade was restored in three stages, and you can really see which bit was restored most recently (photos to follow).

On the way to the cathedral we had to cross the street to avoid a drunk coming the other way, vomiting as he walked - this was not to be my last daytime drunken encounter, as we shall see. Nantes seemed like it would be a nice place to live, but I must say, man, did we get hassled! In Tours, and in England in R's case, we don't get yelled at or stared at nearly as much - not sure whether we stood out as tourists, or if it's just what they're like in Nantes, but there were several unpleasant encounters where men leered or made various remarks (not all of which were understood, but you get the drift). One guy yelled something (didn't catch what) pretty much right in our faces as we were walking past, in broad daylight, and he was with a woman! On the plus side, one guy asked us for money in a very polite fashion, and was even nice when we said no.

Anyway, Sunday night we had an apéro and then dinner quite late thereafter, I didn't enjoy the meal quite as much as the previous two nights, but it wasn't bad & the entrée of (essentially) cheese on toast was very nice.

On Sunday, R had to catch her train back to Tours at midday, and I decided to take the opportunity of hitting the beach while I was nearby. So, with beaucoup de tristesse, it was goodbye to R, but it will not be another 11 months till we see each other next - R's wedding is locked in for May, if not before.

I headed off, then, to St Nazaire, a reasonable-sized coastal town not far from Nantes. I still hadn't made up my mind whether I would just stay for the afternoon or the night, but when I arrived at the train station, once again there were few facilities - no tourist information, no luggage storage that I could see, and I couldn't get the coin-operated toilets to work, so I just decided to head into town, hoping the beach was close. Had no idea of the size or layout of the town at this stage. I ended up following the signs to the Office of Tourism, which was maybe not the best idea in hindsight, since it was about a 20 minute walk away through pretty desolate areas - okay, not that far, but on a blazing hot day, with a suitcase and no idea where you're going and how far away it is, it feels longer. Anyway, by the time I got there and enquired about hotels and so on, I decided it would be best to take a room for the night, so I could change into my swimsuit, leave my luggage, and hit the beach properly.

Before I even got to the tourist office, however, I had quite a disturbing encounter. Remember what I said about the vomiting drunk? Mum, look away now... I was about to meet vomiting drunk #2. Just before I got to the tourist office, I came across a Carrefour supermarket, and popped in for a bottle of water and a sandwich. Right outside there was that rarity of rarities in France, a free public toilet, hurrah! When I went in, I saw a girl at the sink washing her hands. It took a second to realise that she was running her cut finger under water, and that she was vomiting. I went up to her and asked her if she was okay, and another girl suddenly appeared behind me and told me not to worry, she would look after her. I was pretty disturbed - they were pretty obviously street kids, and it looked like a serious cut, but I didn't really want to argue with the second girl. I went to use the bathroom, since the girls were between me and the door in any case. It was absolutely hideous - when the girl wasn't vomiting, she was screaming and crying in the most horrible way. The only thing I could think to do was to take some plasters out of my bag when I was in the loo and offer them to the girl who had talked to me. When I came out, there were about 5 or 6 of them in the bathroom, including men, several of them clutching bottles of alcohol. I offered the girl the plasters and she said that I was kind, but they would be no use - which judging by the cut, was true, although presumably better than nothing at all. The wounded girl was still screaming horribly. I wasn't really scared at this stage, since the girl was talking to me quite nicely, but I did think it was probably better not to hang around since they clearly didn't want my help. Looking back, I think I was probably lucky that they were busy with their own drama and didn't take it in their heads to rob me or worse... Goodness knows how the girl got injured, for starters. So I left, but I was worried enough to tell the people at the tourist office across the road what I had seen. They told me that they were always hanging around there, fighting and getting into trouble - the police came by regularly, but just left again. They didn't really seem to care, so what could I do? In fact, I went to the supermarket the next day and there were three or four of them (not sure if they were some of the same ones from the day before or not) in front of me in line, buying dozens of bottles of beer and wine. Judging from the conversation of the cashiers, this was a daily experience. Someone told me that there's been for quite some time a phenomenon in these parts of 'punk' kids who dress in a certain way (boots, cargo pants and so on), hang out on the streets drinking, and go everywhere with huge dogs on chains, and once I was told that, it's true, you see them all the time. It's really sad that in a country like France, which may not be perfect in terms of giving opportunities to young people, but that at least has a social safety net for those who will take it, that these kids can end up pretty much voluntarily living on the streets, begging and drinking themselves into oblivion. How did they end up like that?

Anyway, now that I've finished giving my mum nightmares, the rest of the afternoon went well, spent lying on a couple of lovely sandy beaches on the Atlantic coast (my first time, not counting Ireland where I saw the Atlantic but there were no beaches). By the time I got there, I only had a few hours on the beach, but it was very nice. I was planning a day at the beach today, and even to go for a swim, but I was very disappointed this morning to wake up to overcast, drizzly skies and a forecast that the whole day would be the same. :( I went out briefly in the morning, decided that I didn't want to go to a museum dedicated to St Nazaire's history as a naval port (ye gods!), so went to the train station and discovered that it was going to take all day to complete a journey of about 2 1/2 hours, owing to long stops in Nantes and Angers. Got to the train station at 10.45, set out from St Nazaire at 12.20, and finally made it to Tours at 6.05! Wasn't too bad really, read my book (Wolf Hall, proving a winner so far) and went into town for lunch at Nantes.

Good to be home, if a bit disappointed about the beach today and sorry that the holiday with R went so quickly. Looking forward to Porto with my friend Carolyn this weekend though!