A few days in La Rochelle

The next stop on our itinerary was LA Rochelle, or to be more precise, Puilboreau - which is where Mathilde's dad and Francoise live (together with Francoise's mum, sister Etienette as well as Etienette's husband). So quite a big household then - but their house is big enough to welcome plenty of more people (which is good since there were up to 16 of us during the week!). We went by Blabla car from Nantes, together with Herquise who lives in Nantes.

We spent a pretty relaxing few days at Puilboreau. Lunching and drinking with everybody (which I must say is always a big pleasure - both Etienette and Francoise are excellent cooks!), swimming in the swimming pool, doing a bit of sport around Puilboreau (it's nicely rural, so it's much nicer for running than the somewhat overcrowded French Riviera) and of course playing Scrabble with Joel.

On Tuesday, we headed into La Rochelle to go to the cinema - after all, it's been months since we've been! La Rochelle was rather lively, as it always is during the summer. It is about to get very busy indeed, as the Francofolie music festival is about to start! We saw a nice Jane Austen adaptation called Love & Friendship. Our short walk around the Vieux Port also confirmed my opinion about the fact that La Rochelle is a pretty cool place.

On Wednesday the 13th, grand fireworks were planned for Puilbureau to celebrate Bastille Day. Of course Bastille Day is on the 14th, but I suppose the smaller towns around La Rochelle do their fireworks the day before, since most people head into La Rochelle for the "Big Ones". The ones we checked out in Puilboreau were nothing to be ashamed of, rather the opposite. The municipality had put up an impressive show in front of an impressive castle, to the tune of classic songs mostly from Abba. They'd even organized a DJ, a bar and what not to follow the fireworks. Unfortunately we'd left our wallets home though, so no beer for us!

The next day, it was mine and Mathilde's turn to cook for everybody. For lunch, we prepared pizzas followed by a fruit salad, and for dinner, my bravura number, the Finnish salmon soup... It all went down pretty well. For the evening, we headed into La Rochelle to check out the fireworks. Actually, a good friend of ours, Isabelle, was in town with her niece, so we decided to meet up with them.

After a drink in the old port (checking out the busy crowds, what with the Francofolie festival having started), we headed off to a beach just by the entrance of the port to check out the fireworks. Before the fireworks, we were treated to a bit of free music, as there was a concert just nearby. The fireworks themselves were a bit of a letdown, actually. I felt that they did not really take advantage of the amazing site of La Rochelle, and it seemed a pity there was no music during the fireworks - especially as there was a bloody music festival on! I guess it's hard to do with live music, but at least with recorded music!?

As we got back to La Rochelle, we were shocked to find out about the attacks in Nice. Thankfully, we quickly found out none of our friends/colleagues had been directly affected by the attacks. Still, a great tragedy - shocking how much damage a single crazy guy could cause with one truck. Scary to imagine what could've happened if he'd have had an armed partner in the truck...