The entire time in La Rochelle we were trying to compare the town to something we knew. At first it reminded me of the Outer Banks, but then you would pass old homes, world war II forts, bakeries, old men on bicycles, old men in speedos, and everyone speaking French and we knew that this place was a far cry from any town in North Carolina. We planned the trip Wednesday afternoon and left on Thursday morning at 10am. All we knew about the town was that there was a nearby island you could take a boat to and a beach. Other than that, we were pretty much winging it.
Jeudi: Our day began Thursday afternoon where we checked into our hotel (a real hotel! with our own private bathroom and clean sheets and free towels). I never appreciated hotels like this until after traveling Europe in hostels. We started walking around the town, stopping to sit by the water and watch the ships pass by. While we were walking, we found an ice cream place with about 40 different flavors and homemade cones. This would soon become our daily routine for the rest of the trip. I got blood orange and raspberry sorbet, only to watch it fall right off the cone as we reached the water. We decided to grab some wine and chips to enjoy by the water, and within an hour I was already burnt and too tipsy to really care. We found a small street with nice restaurants and picked a place called Cote de Boeuf for it's lower fixed price dinner menu. Despite the name of the restaurant, we ordered crab and shrimp. I was having some difficulties eating the grilled shrimp and one of my tails ended up flying across the table. Fortunately, it landed on Diana's side so she got the look when the waitress came to clear our table. Exhausted and a little red, we decided to go back to the hotel and wake up early for the bus ride to Ile de Re.
Vendredi: Friday morning we rolled out of bed around 10, put on our bathing suits, and ran to catch the 11 o clock bus for Ile de Re. We were all set with grocery bags full of Doritos and a 1.5 liter bottle of euro sangria. When we got to the station, we were informed that the next bus would not be leaving for another two hours until the woman looked out onto the road and told us to run to catch one that was leaving right now. We ran across the parking lot with our neon green shopping bags and just made it to the last bus. Then we broke out baguette and babybel cheese and feasted on the way there. Looking around the bus, we noticed that we were the only ones eating as well as the only ones under the age of 60.
Apparently we passed over some big bridge to get to the island, but I missed it because I was passed out on the bus. We got to the island and went to the tourism office for a map. It was completely useless. All we knew was that the bottle of sangria was heavy and we wanted a beach asap. We asked a few shop keepers where to find the beach and finally we found a woman who gave us a funny face and said 15 minutes down the street. We leave the building and there is a huge sign that reads "plage ->" We walk through a citadel from WWII and a few monument looking things from the 1800's (that's how you know you're in France), and found a rocky kind of beach with old fisherman and couples surrounding it. The beach itself was empty, so we went to town on the Doritos and Sangria and proceeded to pass out in the sun. Diana and I listened to Something Corporate songs and belted Konstantine while Theresa read Jane Eyre or something. This was a blissful afternoon I will never forget...mostly because I fell asleep with my hands on my stomach and I now have two white hand marks surrounded by somewhat painful burns, resembling the chest of Kocoum from Disney's Pocahontas. We loved that we had our own "private beach" and watched as the tide went down leaving beached boats in the rocky sand (which is apparently normal here?).
This left us just enough time to make it back to the bus while passing by donkeys in pants (anes en collants). This is an Ile de Re tradition which we were later told allowed women travelers to store things in the pants pockets. The best part are the donkey in pants stuffed animals available at any store in the vicinity. The bus ride was followed by showers and moules frites for dinner. We were so hungry by this point we were beginning to stare down other customers, which got pretty uncomfortable, but the mussels were so fresh there were crabs in some. Then came gelato- raspberry dark chocolate praline and coconut I believe- and a nice walk around the water. We saw a group of people crowded around a bar across the street and went over to see what was going on. There were three younger guys playing music, a singer, upright bass, and guitar. We guessed that they were in high school based on the fact that all of their young looking friends were there watching and the girl next to us in a furry cowboy hat was drunkenly dancing with an "18th birthday" balloon. They were really really good, so we stayed for a while to watch until we the birthday girl was getting to be too much so we went home.
Samedi: We grabbed pain au chocolat almondes (kind of like a French Paula Dean recipe of a pastry wrapped in pastry). We headed to the boat to go to Fort Boyard and Ile d'Aix. When we boarded the boat, the three of us chose to sit uncomfortably close, facing a French couple, and chowing down our disgustingly rich pastries- luckily the wind was blowing making our pastry crumbs soar through the air, which our new neighbors loved very much. One of the guys working on the boat asked if we wanted our picture taken and when he tried to hand the camera back to me, my dress flew up while my straps started to come down, making the whole exchange pretty awkward. We headed to the front of the boat and stood next to an older man taking pictures. I asked if he wanted a picture with the Fort (it's in the middle of the water, so the boat just circles it instead of docking), and he looked puzzled, politely declined, and then offered to take ours. He heard our American accents and started asking where we were from (of course complimenting our French skills) and told us that he was born and raised in La Rochelle. This began one of my favorite conversations I've had since coming to France. The man told us of how he used to go camping at Ile d'Aix and he still comes a few times a week to have picnics and see the island. He also told us about the forts and how even though Napoleon ordered the building of the forts, by the time they were finished the technology had become obsolete. My Ile d'Aix pamphlet said that it is only used for a t.v. show now. There was also a British couple with three adorable dogs. A man on a wheelchair nearby was sitting smiling at the dogs, and the owner picked up the big dog and brought him over so the man could pet it. We soon realized that this part of the boat was much better than our original spot up top with all the picture takers and fun haters. We docked at the island and headed to the market to pick up food for a picnic.
At the store we picked up sandwiches, nectarines, and grapes and found a bench to enjoy them on. After our little picnic, we started walking on the path around the island (the whole island isn't that big and only takes about 2 and a half hours to see the whole thing). On our way we saw cute little houses and gardens. We were also lucky enough to catch a very old man plowing his field in his speedo. We accidentally stumbled upon a tunnel museum about the soldiers at the forts on the island and then caught a view of the water. We finished our visit with fresh oysters by the water at a little farm. Diana and I split our very fresh oysters while the owner of the farm told us about how he harvests them. The oysters we had took 4 years to harvest, and he told us about how he has to move them around different parts of the island. He showed us his machinery used to move the oysters and brought us out 10 month old oysters so we could see how small they were. He spoke really fast, so I could barely understand him but Diana picked up everything he said. We also had some bread and wine, which Theresa had to reinforce with her hands so they wouldn't blow away. The oysters were amazing, and definitely the freshest seafood I've ever had. Then the man's young daughters came to hang out and started whispering about us. We were so blissfully happy about the oysters we couldn't have cared less about what the 7 year old girls were saying. At this point my skin couldn't take much more sun and I had to wear my sweater in the 80 degree heat. We walked back to the boat and enjoyed the windy hour ride back to La Rochelle.
We were starving but it was too early for dinner, so we decided to grab mint chocolate chip ice cream and go see the tower. The tower is where they kept English prisoners in some wars back in the day. The best part was the griffiti (or as the English translation descriptions said "graffito") that was made by the prisoners. It had pictures of boats and the names of prisoners with where they were captured. We climbed all the way to the top of the tower and got a great view of the city.
Then we grabbed brie and baguette to enjoy by the water. We wandered around for a while and saw some other areas of the town. We went back to our regular spot near the water and hung out for an hour or two just enjoying the view. That night we went for moules frites round 2, but this time we decided to get it with a curry sauce very well known in that area. We finished with creme caramel which was amazing since La Rochelle is known for it's caramel. The importance of the salt was another lesson we received during the weekend. Apparently salt is only found in 3 places in France, and La Rochelle is known for it. Therefore, the caramel made with that salt is famous and known for its ocean like flavor. We ended the night by watching our "friend" playing with fire by the water- we had discovered him the night before-but he wasn't very good. He kept dropping the torches and then he got one upped by a man juggling fire on a unicycle with a top hat.
Dimanche: Today was tough because finally our burns stopped hurting, but we had really explored everything in La Rochelle except the beach. We checked out the hotel and decided to suck it up and go to the water. It was super windy this morning, so the sand was blowing everywhere- a little flashback from the Dust Bowl or something similar. I decided to go in the water (so now I can say that I've been in both sides of the Atlantic) which was freezing but felt really nice after numbing my body to the cold. I finished the Italy part of my book "Eat, Pray, Love" and decided that I wasn't in the mood to read about her religious experiences in India and preferred her food finds in Rome.
We went to lunch in the late afternoon to escape the hottest part of the day, and Diana and I enjoyed grilled calamari. Our waitress was really rude, so we followed lunch with our last ice cream of the day- mint strawberry sorbet and caramel chocolate ice cream. The sorbet had pieces of fresh mint in it and was easily the best sorbet EVER. Then we found some rocks to lay on and watched these dogs play with each other by the water. Two of the dogs wrestled while the other one searched for sticks and rocks to show his friends. At one point, he picked up a huge rock in his mouth and looked so excited to show his owners, who were too busy drinking and smoking joints I think to notice. We watched them for a while and then realized it had gotten pretty late already. We headed back to the hotel, turned in our sandy towels that we snuck to the beach, and picked up our bags.
Overall, a very successful beach week. I showered immediately after returning to my apartment but I'm pretty sure it will take a few more to get all of the sand out of my hair. The fact that we were able to go to a place as beautiful as La Rochelle with 2 hours of preparation makes us a little sad to be going back home in a few weeks. I'm not quite ready to give this all up!
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