2023 - La Loire à Vélo: Day 8: Wed 31 May

11-28 degC, fine and sunny with a pesky NE wind

Walk: 24km; total: 73km

Even though the aircon did not work last light, by leaving the windows open just a tad after the late night revelers had gone to bed, we were comfortable, thanks to the low overnight temperatures. Breakfast starts at a respectable time at this hotel - 6am! Greg decided to go for a walk before brekky and Wendy would meet him in the breakfast room. Wendy wasn’t that long in getting ready for breakfast but when she arrived Greg was already half way through his. It turned out that he hadn’t dressed for the outside temp, coupled with the rather cold wind and was soon back inside the hotel. Reviews for breakfast at this hotel were very mixed. We found it to be more than sufficient; a good mix of continental stuff, with jolly good coffee from a push button machine.

Refueled, we set off to see the sights of Nantes (pronounced ‘Naunts’, in case you were wondering). Thanks to our revised schedule we really only have one whole day to do justice to this fairly large city. To make the task easier we used a green line marked on the footpath around all the points of interest. You simply find the part of the line nearest to your hotel and follow that to see just about everything you could wish for. In the morning session we dutifully did this for 14km and saw lots of sights. In the afternoon, however, we wised-up to the fact that there is no need to follow it everywhere as sometimes there’s nothing to see. We think some businesses pay to have the green line go past their door. We took a few short-cuts to see what we wanted. 24km all up for the day, pretty good effort. That didn’t include the short ferry ride which was part of the green line ‘walk’. Although Greg had seen many of these sights four years ago, he was happy to to see them again with Wendy. There were two sights that Wendy could have done without - Les Brutalistes and the Palais de Justice. We both agreed the Tour Bretagne was not even worth photographing. Apart from those two, all other sights were worth the effort. There were of course a few sights that were undergoing renovations so we could not see them or go inside. Our pick of the day was the mechanical elephant, so very lifelike, even down to the shape of the tip of its trunk. Unfortunately we didn’t have time to do the Art Gallery, which we normally enjoy, or wait for the elephant to be taken out for a walk. Greg saw it last time.

For dinner we went back to the same Thai chain we had last night, just one closer to the hotel. The meals (different ones) were good; actually a bit better tonight. A slow wander around the block back to the hotel was about the limit of our tired legs. As we walked back we were astounded by the number of eateries there are in this city and how many people were dining out. In addition to that, there were dozens of Uber Eats and Deliveroo delivery cyclists wizzing around the city taking food to the remainder of the population who were not eating out.

A great day in Nantes and we’re pretty sure that we have done it justice. On the bikes tomorrow; which is well overdue according to Greg.