The way back home!

After a wonderful and memorable weekend, it was unfortunately time to head back home... But like on the way to La Rochelle, we decided to make the best of our trip back and make a couple of stops. After all, I have no idea when we'll be back in this time of France next time (Japanese companies not being famous for their generosity when it comes to holidays...)

We started by visiting Santes, one of the more famous historic cities in Charantes. The first impression is one of a typical provincial French capital. Saintes is not what I would call a touristic hot spot, but it does have a handful of quite interesting historic sights . We started with the roman amphitheater, one of the most well-preserved in France.

The Roman heritage bit done, we walked through some quite picturesque medieval streets, crossed the Charante river (briefly checking out Germannicus' Arch de Triomphe, which stands by the river) to explore some of the Christian heritage of Saintes. We started by visiting the impressive Cathedral de Saint-Pierre, and continued on to the beautifully restored Abbaye Saint-Marie-des-Dames (a monastery for women), which was unfortunately shut.

After a pleasant morning spent in Saintes, we carried on our journey towards Bordeaux. We made another stop at Blaye. The reason to come to Blaye (for tourists, anyway), is to visit the impressive Citadel built by Vauban. It's one of the most impressive works by the very busy military architect. Of crucial strategic importance in the defence of Bordeaux, this UNESCO world heritage sight is indeed a very interesting place to visit. It reminds me a bit of Suomenlinna near Helsinki in that it's avery nice place to walk around, and almost like a small town in its own right. Impressive as this place is though, I reckon Seurasaari is even more impressive!

This time around, we spent the night at a rather curious bed and breakfast south of Toulouse. The old farmhouse has been converted to a BnB by a former airplane technician. Clearly passionate about his region (and classic cars too, he owns two vintage mustangs!), each room is decorated based on a particular theme of his region  - we got the airplane room (Toulouse is the aerospace/aviation capital of France, Airbus being heavily present). A special mention goes to the amazing meal our friendly host prepared for us - all about duck (another regional specialty).

The next day, the plan was to arrive not too late back at home, but we did make time for one stopover, at Martigues, near Marseille. It's a small typical Provencal town, one that features in a lot of impressionist painters' work, so it's a place I've wanted to check out for quite some time. It is a quite nice place to walk around, some spots in the town really are very picturesque indeed, and really show Provence as t was say 50 years ago. And today, with the sun out, and a clear blue sky, Martigues was a beautiful place to walk around indeed!

That brought an end to our lovely mini-holiday/road trip...