Relaxing in La Rochelle

So finally, we arrived at our main destination for our holidays, at La Rochelle (or to be more precise, the nearby village Puilboreau. So as I already mentioned, Joel and Francoise recently moved here from Angers, they bought a big house together with Franoice's sister Ethienette and her husband Jean-Claude.

A very nice place it is - the stone  house is big enough for everybody, as well as nice, traditional & very French. There's a big garden, and even a swimming pool!

When we arrived, there were plenty of visitors: Francoise's son Xavier, some friend of Xavier's, Mathilde's niece Alix, Ethiennette & Jean-Claude's daughter. So plenty of people in the house - so we ended up on the sofa bed (no problem with that!). The weather wasn't great - but we still decided to head off for a bit of a walk to explore the surroundings with Joel & Alix. The surrounding area is pretty nice - typical French countryside, rather heavily farmed it seems (a fact one can not only see, but also smell!).

The evening meal turned into a rather drawn-out affair (as they often do in France!), as we chatted away and enjoyed the food, excellent as always. We finished off with a bit of Calva (the local Eau de Vie variant in this part of France) with Xavier and his friends. Apart from that, there was of course the mandatory scrabble session (I'm sure it does wonders to my French vocabulary!)

The next day followed the same leisurely pace - excellent meals (Francoise's cooking is traditional French cuisine as it should be!), scrabble, enjoying the swimming pool and just lazying about. We did head of to La Rochelle, as we unfortunately had to drop off Alix at the train station. So we had a quick walk around the Vieux Port - it was as nice I could remember from my last visits, but considerably busier! (the dodgy weather had brought the tourist hordes to La Rochelle, it would seem). We also tried what is apparently the best ice cream in La Rochelle - and it was indeed most tasty! (almost worth the half hour or so we queued).

The next day, we were heading a bit further out a field, to visit our good friend Aude and Magaye in Nantes. Well, Aude, Magaye and Olympe, to be more precise! (little Olympe was born just a few weeks ago). After a nice meal and some catching up at their lovely house (and trying to locate the rabbit Oishii who was away hiding somewhere!), we headed off to enjoy the sunny weather a bit in Nantes.

As the weather was good, we decided to go to the Jardin des Plantes, a botanical garden. A pretty nice place to walk around - there was also a kind of themed exhibition of flower-covered sculptures inspired by works from Claude Ponti, an author who writes for children. A pretty nice & imaginative "exhibition" (not sure that's the right way to describe it...).

To finish of our last night in La Rochelle, we decided to have a go Mölkky. I'd not actually ever tried this Finnish game, invented in my home country 1996 (I guess I left Finland before it became a big hit!), and actually pretty popular in France (possibly since it's rather similar to the even more popular petanque).  It's all good fun, even if I took a pretty bad  beating by Xavier and Francoise...

The next day, the plan was to head off to Xavier's place in the Vendee. But before hitting the road, we decided to have  a short walk near La Rochelle. Following recommendations from the locals, I tagged along to the Chef de Baie, a little bay just a couple of kilometres from La Rochelle, a lovely little place with a nice beach, and some nice cliffs, just perfect for a morning walk. We walked along the coastline all the way to the outskirts of La Rochelle, where we had an overpriced cafe at a bar (even more expensive than the Cote d'Azur!).