Trapped in Nantes

In early May, there was a crazy confluence of national holidays: May 1 is sort of like labor day; May 8 is WWII victory day, when the armistice was signed in 1945; and May 12 this year was Pentacost. Furthermore, the first two occurred on Thursdays and May 12 was a Monday, which meant that nearly the entire country took a five-day weekend from May 8 through May 12. (In fact, schools in Olivet decided to close on Friday May 9 and Saturday May 10, moving the former day to an earlier Wednesday, when schools would normally be closed.) So we decided to spend a couple days in Nantes. (Molly and Betsy are shown here waiting for the tram in Nantes.)

In a previous post, we mentioned how much we enjoyed visiting Nantes. We were anxious to go back, and because we had visited the city and knew a bit about its layout, we knew that we could easily make this visit by train instead of by car (hooray!). A mandatory visit would be a return to Chez l'Huitre.

There was only one snag: When we got to the train station to buy our tickets, we learned that there were no trains returning from Nantes to Orléans on May 11, the day we had planned to come back -- so we were essentially forced to stay an additional night in Nantes. Drat.

With the extra time on our hands, it made sense to buy 48-hour passes to all the museums / public transportation for all of us, which allowed us to visit all of the following free of additional charge, among tens of other possibilities we didn't have time for: The machines de l'Ile Nantes (there was an extra charge for riding the giant elephant), the museum of Nantes history at the chateau of the dukes of Bretagne, a boat-ride up the river Erdre (shown in picture), and the Nantes planetarium.

Prior to going into the museum at the Chateau, we had a picnic in the great weather, where Dave encountered his nemesis. (quack!) This pesky duck kept trying to get close enough to share a bit of sandwich and Dave kept trying to shoo it away with the water bottle. The duck was not intimidated despite Dave's clear size advantage, and at one point it walked right up and smacked Dave in the back with its bill. Needless to say, all three of the girls found this rather funny. They still talk about it.