Jun 27th - La Rochelle

With the town’s art museum closed for renovations (since 2018 apparently!) we decided we’d go for a walk along the coast to a nearby…ish beach, ‘Les Minimes’.  The walk was actually a little bit of a surprise as, up until we reached the beach, the entire 3.5 km pathway was alongside the port with its thousands of moored boats, not something we were expecting.  It would seem that the port can berth up to 4000 of them, and up to 50 mts in length as well, it’s enormous! 

Once we’d got there though the area in and around the beach turned out to be a little bit of a disappointment.  Surrounded by ‘holiday resort’ style accommodation and the French equivalent of ‘kiss me quick’ type shops and bars, we’d been hoping for something a bit more ‘natural’.  Still, jumping on the ‘Bus de Mer’😀, the local water taxi, we were soon back in La Rochelle proper. 

Before going out walking this morning we’d been given some ‘blurb’ from the tourist office regarding self guided walks in the old port, and so this is where we headed next.  With some lovely old laneways, porticos, and buildings, there were a couple of ‘standouts’ for us.  The first, the magnificent ’Hôtel de Ville’, the town hall, and built in the 15th century, is the oldest one in France still being used for its original purpose.  It’s a beautiful building but unfortunately we didn’t get a chance to go inside as it’s a work day. 

The next ‘standout’ for us was the ‘Café de La Paix’, a beautiful art nouveau decor coffee shop.  Apparently Georges Simenon, he of ‘Detective Maigret’ fame, used to be a local. 


Bottom L:  Modern female equivalent of a ‘Pissoir’. 



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