Enjoying the Coast of France -- No, not that one

When people think about the French coast, everyone tends to think about the French Riviera, and the Med.

Whereas my french family has a fondness for the area around Les Sables d'Olonne - a French town on the Atlantic perhaps best known as the start of the Vendée Globe, a frankly unhinged sailing competition that is run from the city every four years.

It's the sort of thing you read a little about and then find yourself surprised that it's only killed one person during the running of it.  (It's only really been running since the 90s though, give it time).

I had visited this area when I was a wee lad, around 1997, and it was really neat to be back and see the place through eyes that have seen a great many things since then.

 It's still a beautiful city.  Built up via a seawall and backfill, the tide is long and even and essentially consumes the beach once a day -- I remember being here as a kid and how we'd all create spaces down near the water, and then when the tide started to turn some people would pack up, but lots of people would just move their camp of chairs and shade and towels a quarter of the way up the beach and get in another hour, repeating this two or three times until there was just a thin line of camps up against the wall, the water impatiently reaching forward to lap against the rocks, and the sun was setting.

 

The wall provides an excellent boardwalk as well.  The crowds haven't really arrived for the summer yet, if it's anything like the 90s, in July that beach will be FULL of beachgoers, from wall to water.

 

I was there to visit my cousin, Baptiste, and his husband Hugh, who I hadn't seen since even earlier, back when Baptiste came to visit my family in the states somewhere in 1995 or 1996.  They live and work in Algers but have a small home they adore in the countryside near the ocean and regularly come out here for the weekends.  I was lucky enough to be able to meet them in the city and spend a couple of days with them, they were fantastic hosts. 

 

(more on the food and their delightfully weird cats in the next entry)

My delightful cousins who picked me up from the train station and showed me around the region.

 Another thing (which I could barely remember) about Les Sable d'Olonne was that they have a couple of side streets that a local artist meticulously decorates with shells.

Some of the current designs were truly delightful.  

I think this Dracula with his flock of bats was my favorite.

Baptiste and Hugh were excellent hosts -- they walked me around town, we bought a few cheeses (because they only had 4 at the house already -- I love it here) and also a truly excellent selection of very nice chocolates (be still my heart).  The next day we explored the surrounding smaller towns on the Atlantic.  It was a lovely day of little seaside towns full of cute shops and first-tourists-of-the-season, with warm, sunny skies overhead. They pointed out seaside hotels built in the styles of Tunisia and North Africa, and we got award winning ice cream, and overall it was just the sort of rambling, pleasant visit with family you always hope you'll get when you show up at the home of blood relative and are never quite sure you'll get.

 I'm a very lucky man indeed.

Nantes is ready to talk about The Triangle Trade and the Enslavement of Millions of Africans.

 I didn't know this about Nantes when I planned to visit here, because at a glance it doesn't look like it's on the water -- but it's a port town and a ship-building city that brought a massive amount of wealth to France in the golden age of sail.

It's close enough to the mouth of the Loire and has a deep enough river draw that boats were built there for centuries, and the close connection to Britain meant that the culture and economy was heavily focused around ocean trade.

With a well established agricultural industry already in place, France didn't have an economic justification to import enslaved peoples the way the colonies did, and the trade winds that caused the triangle trade to run so profitably didn't incentivize changing that.

So there weren't every very many enslaved people in France widely, or in Nantes in particular.

But many of the men who lived here, who set sail from here, and who built huge empires of wealth here did so because they bought people in Africa, sold them in Brazil and St. Martin and Georgia, and then bought sugar and molasses and cocoa in those places and brought it to Europe, before returning again to the African coast.

Millions of people were displaced, held in captivity against their will, then lived, raised children, and died, all far from their homes, as a result of that economic engine.

About 25 years ago the French National Assembly officially acknowledged that as a series of crimes against humanity.  Nantes, to its credit, has put a lot of effort into telling the story of slavery honestly, in a way that gives the horror of it a weight that feels appropriate.

One of those ways is Le Mémorial de l'abolition de l'esclavage (the memorial to the abolition of slavery), a powerful memorial that's . . . kindof impossible to photograph.

Aboveground it's a series of glass tiles embedded in the concrete surface of the Quai, each one bearing the name of a sailing vessel that set out from Nantes, plus the name of the port to which it delivered that awful cargo (I believe this means certain ship names appear more than once).

Under the quai, against the waterline, there is a walk that contains both educational and hopeful and uplifting messages about slavery as it was, and abolition as it is.

It was there that I first saw a Sankey diagram that helped me understand something I never new before, which was how the numbers actually played out across Africa and the eastern edge of the Americas.

I'm not sure that I think the damage done by that industry can be understated.  I am not sure that the morality of it can ever be demonized enough.

But Nantes is doing their part, finding new ways to put an awareness of that awful history in front of people.

Another example -- when I visited the history museum, I found them working that awareness into the museum's exhibits.

In addition to adding an entire museum section about the trade that was haunting and powerful, they also worked with a couple of artists to bring artwork into the museum that helped challenge the visitor's perceptions.

One way they did that was a series of portraits by Omar Victor Diop, which were striking.

But more powerful and blunt was work from Rosana Paulino, a contemporary artist, which they embedded directly into historical displays showcasing the wealth of Nantes -- particularly parts of that wealth that were purchased and created at the height of the triangle trade.

This was a gut wrenching and brilliant choice by the museum's curator.  Top marks.

I was really glad to see the work they are doing.

. . .

As I was walking away from the Memorial, there was a school group encircled around a teacher.

She was speaking slowly, in both audible French and in sign language.

The group of students in front of her were all white, save one, a tall lanky boy with the dark skin that implied ancestry from sub-Saharan Africa.

The other students were each standing singularly, but that boy was being hugged by another, a white boy his age, with a shock of unruly brown hair and a kind expression, who was saying something to him that had them both awkwardly laughing.

There was as soft gentleness to the voices; I did not catch what was being said.  The impression that I have, which I hope was right, was that of one friend comforting another, acknowledging the awkwardness of this moment, and saying "hey, this is just a field trip for most us, but I know it's going to hit different for you, and whatever you need, I will try to help you feel at ease.  You're my friend."

It felt like the sort of uncomfortable we should always hope such a memorial will facilitate.    The kind of discomfort that can teach and heal.

If you haven't had the chance to find a place that you feel healthy discomfort in the past year -- may this serve as an encouragement to do so.

Nantes has a collection of Incredible Machines

 Nantes hosts a marionette workshop called "Les Machines De L'ile" that you can visit.

It's a place where they make fantastic and incredible marionettes, ranging from the size of a bird all the way up to le grand éléphant de Nantes, which is about 3 times the size of a normal elephant and is fully mobile.

Rather than take my own pictures, here's a picture taken from a google search of it that conveys really well how striking it is:

The workshop makes incredible workshop installations and the puppetry work is really neat.

For almost ten years, the workshop was working towards a fantastic goal called "The Heron Tree" which was to be a giant metal tree full of real greenery plus animated and animatronic creatures that you could wander through and climb. 

This poster conveys well the feeling and aesthetic they were pursuing:

It was an incredible idea but the funding fell apart a couple of years ago, and it looks like it'll pass into obscurity soon.

If you get the chance to visit Nantes now, and see what they were building towards, I recommend it.  I took pictures but I don't want to post them here and give anyone the impression they've seen all the cool things the workshop has to offer, so if you're interested in seeing more about the marionettes and animatronics of the workshop, send me a message on Signal and I can show them to you directly.

Nantes in a series of vignettes.

 I was in Nantes for 3 days, one of which I mostly lost to a stomach bug that left me very lethargic (turns out life needs things to live, as the saying goes, and in the absence of much in the way of digested calories there's not much fuel to work with).

I wandered the city a bit and also worked, so here's a series of vignettes and observations in a hodge-podge:

First, something that I've found interesting that has been universal with all the short-term rental places I've stayed: the stairwells are pitch black unless someone is using them.  The French simply do not illuminate interior stairways all the time -- which is smart.  One place (Toulouse) had motion detectors in each floor, but for the others, there was a simpler solution -- automatically-resetting button near your door that triggered a timer with more than enough time for you to schlep up the stairs to your floor. (To see an example look back at the end of the previous entry, it's the big white paddle-button by the door).

So, don't stop to tie your shoes, I guess, but overall I liked this system.  It felt both intelligent and efficient -- a reduction of wasted power with a handful of very cheap devices that cost almost nothing to build or install.

Onward!

I had been encouraged to look for smaller, more heavy-hitting patisseries after my choice to consume things from a Chain bakery (gasp!) while I was in London, and so in Nantes I made it a point to find a place that qualified.

Did I ever.

The boulangerie around the corner from me was well reviewed so I figured I'd drop in -- and that's a medal wall showing Bronze, Silver, and Gold medals in several forms of patisserie, including multiple regional gold medals in croissant making.  

Y'all.

They were so good.

The last day I was there, because it was a specialty of the region, I got a Breton gateau made with Prunes and it turned out to just be the power-lifting cousin of a Clafouti, basically?  Rich, dense, not too sweet, so custardy that you felt you were nourished for a full day of labor.  

Absolutely a work of art.

I've eaten a lot of pastry on this trip but honestly I think these were probably the best constructed.  Truly next-level-nonsense pastry, cranked out and sold for a euro or two like it was street-food.

I love this country.

(One thing I regretted was not getting a Kouign Amann from that shop, which was a crime since that's another Breton specialty -- but I got lucky and got to make up for that at least a little bit in Paris.)

Onward!

Nantes has a castle!  It's gorgeous, there's a fantastic history museum inside, and I highly recommend visiting both.  I didn't take many pictures in the museum but suffice it to say: the winding way they used the castle spaces was brilliant and they did a great job putting it together.  It was easily worth a half-day and I'd only budgeted 90 minutes.

Also: Nantes has a great tram system and the some of the trams have really fantastic paint jobs.  

It makes sense that they'd have a good tram system because Nantes is basically the birthplace of the modern idea of a "Transit line" -- a businessman interested in moving customers to one of his public baths created the first "pay a small fare to ride a set route with others" omnibus here in 1826. 

Also, it's not as full of Art Nouveau beauty as Marseille was, but it does have this absolutely striking public art space, that they now call Le Lieu Unique ("The special place"), which is the site of what was once a biscuit factory that make products which became wildly successful at the perfect time to bring this gorgeous monstrosity to life.

Unfortunately, whoever designed their new Hall of Justice seems to have studied at the same Architects' Academy as Boston City call -- the Academy For The Design Of Civic Buildings That Make Citizens Confident That The People Inside Have The Power To Help them, But Do Not Care And Will Not Help.

Gross.

Thankfully, it's still a gorgeous city aside from this obvious misstep.

I learned about two other things that were interesting in Nantes, and those are each going to get their own entry.

St. Pancras to Nantes.

On Monday I got back on the road, heading to St. Pancras station at the same time that Rachel headed for work.

I was pleased that I'd given myself some Monday padding, choosing a noon departure from St. Pancras, because it gave me peace of mind while I experienced a truly fascinating and rare sociological event from the very front row.

During rush hour, on my way into London, the Victoria line had an equipment failure just as I was changing from the overground line to the Vicky on my way to the station.

For those unfamiliar with London, the Victoria line cannot be allowed to be out of service.

The Victoria line moves approximately 200 million bodies per year (For those of you familiar with air travel, that's roughly double the number of people who pass through Atlanta Hartsfield Jackson).  As you might imagine: most of those are on weekdays, and most of those are during rush hour.

Moving a quarter million people across London over the span of a 3 hour commute cycle is just a normal weekday morning for the Victoria line.

So you know, Monday at 9AM is not a great time for this finely oiled piece of clockwork to just . . . take a little break.

During rush hour, the trains are less than 2 minutes apart, and you can generally see the lights of one approaching the station before the departing train gets out of view in the tunnel.

This means that it moves dozens of people off every station platform onto every train and vice versa, and if the trains stop. . . dozens of people arrive every minute at every station along the route, fully intending to board immediately.

Ok, the stage is set.  Here we go.

As I was approaching the escalator that would take me to the Victoria line southbound platform, they closed the gate directly in front of a woman I was following, with perhaps another 20 or 30 people on our heels, all striding through the station on our way to the train.

In 60 seconds, that number doubled.

The employee explained that the doors of a train had jammed and they were trying to fix it in place.

10 minutes later, there were perhaps 500 people behind me (just in this one station, mind),  We overheard from the employee's radio that the doors were broken and they'd need to unload the train and take it out of service.

I checked my watch and realized I could walk the 3 kilometers between these two stops and still make it to my destination with over an hour to spare, so I decided to wait and see how this played out.

Perhaps 5 or 10 minutes after that, they got that train cleared from the platform and began moving the trains again.  At that point the crowd behind me was easily a thousand jittery and confused people.

At this point, you could see the well-polished veneer of British civility trembling and shimmering like oil in a hot pan.

The crowd around me clearly had no expectation of seeing a service disruption on perhaps the most reliable subway line in the world this morning, during peak rush hour, and the mumbling was restrained but audible.  A girl behind me whimpered to her classmate that she already had some sort of strike against her and could not be late to school again or they would expel her, the panic and surprise palpable in her voice.

A second, larger and more imposing employee appeared to help our current one keep the peace as we heard that trains were beginning to be permitted to move again.

At this point, of course, a huge number of people were already being crammed into each train out in the suburbs, and so the platform below us was already insanity, but they couldn't keep us indefinitely so they started letting us down to the platform to try to board.

We were sent down to the platform single file, the thousand-plus people in the station finding that there was already  a half-circle of perhaps 50 people crowded around each spot where a door would open, waiting for the next train.

Thankfully, Highbury & Islington is a popular transfer off the Victoria as well, and so 5 or 7 people would squeeze off each hyper-crowded train at each door, and then 10 or 15 determined people would CRAM ourselves into each door.

As I had a backpack and 90 minutes of buffer I moved slowly and cautiously until I was in the "lean forward 10 centimeters and you'll lose your face to the next train" position at the front of the cluster of people, and then got myself pushed into the train by the swell of other boarders and nicely ensconced near the center.

I actually watched one Londoner work her way around me (which we'd call cutting in front of me if we're being honest) in the process of that wait, which I was pretty sure Brits where genetically incapable of doing.  I imagined she had a schedule cut much finer than mine though, and I knew I'd just be loitering at St. Pancras when I did arrive, so I wasn't really bothered as much as fascinated and surprised.  Maybe she was a visiting American.

Or maybe if we 're all 3 meals way from a riot, Londoners might just be 3 missed Victoria line trains away from forgetting how to queue.

At King's Cross St. Pancras, the train essentially emptied, of course, disgorging perhaps a thousand Londoners into the city, confused aned shaken perhaps, but resolute. 

I'll say this though -- I didn't see anyone snap at each other.  No-one raised their voice; no one elbowed or shoved.  Aside from my one "work your way around the person in front of you" case, I didn't see anyone pretend they were the main character of the story of a mass transit snafu that no-one expected.

Props to Londoners, y'all are tough nuts to crack.

I reached St. Pancras and took a wander and found myself a scone and some clotted cream (did I go to a French chain bakery for that scone? Why yes I did. 😂)

The scone itself was delicious, the cream perfectly rich and buttery.  It was a great snack.

While walking around, I found a statue of one of the Poet Laureates, John Betjeman, whose impassioned writing about St. Pancras was apparently key to it getting restored rather than torn down when it started falling into disrepair.

I'm glad of this, because it's a beautiful station now.

I do want to make a note to schedule my next train out of London for later in the day and perhaps with friends, so that I can visit this restaurant and budget both time and finances in order to make use of the PUSH FOR CHAMPAGNE button.

I mentioned when I was writing about my journey into London about the embracing lovers -- this is the statue I was referring to.  It's by Paul Day, and it towers over the train engines at the end of the Quais and it's a really remarkable piece.

Some of the details at the base created by his playing with depth in relief are really striking.

With time to spare, I also stepped outside to get one picture of the face of the station and hotel, since it really is a lovely building.

I transited across Paris to Montparnasse (again), and caught a train to Nantes.

I would be staying there in a quick nice Airbnb, but the check-in instructions did have some very ominous language about the stairwell.

Which was reasonable, when I arrived I found that the stairwell's handrail solution was just a rope, and the stairs were both narrow and steep.

And when I arrived I found that while the inside of my Airbnb was perfectly modern, the key and the door that it opened certainly gave the impression I had time traveled a significant amount.

But I reached Nantes without much incident, ate a snack and slept deeply.

London, Dancing, Oscar Wilde and a Brilliant day.

So, for the weekend, I took a TGV to Paris and then caught the Eurostar to London.

This included another case of "Train station wayfinding: how not to do it"

The Eurostar boarding area is on that upper level, and the sign above the stairs is trying to tell you NOT to continue forward onto the (downward) stairs but to go around these stairs and take the escalator that cannot be seen.  Unhinged design choice.  I imagine tens of thousands of lost Brits trying to figure out how to go home get caught underground every year.

Once on the train I was thoroughly amused by this anthropomorphized toilet, (and by the idea that someone in possession of a rubber duck might be dissuaded from feeding it to the poor toilet by this sign).

And then hey presto, a couple of hours later I was in St. Pancras, which is delightfully pretty, these days, more on that when I write about the return.

 

As I was arriving to see my foundational partner, Rachel, who lives here in London, being greeted by a giant neon sign that simply declares "I want my time with you." and a statue of lovers embracing was an ideal way to start my weekend. ❤

It was a whirlwind of a time -- I got to listen to a great blues band, go dancing, get dressed up sharply, meet Benjamin, attend an Oscar Wilde play, revisit an excellent modern Levantine restaurant that Rachel and I had discovered back in December and get up to all sorts of lovely activity.

I took basically no pictures, which is a shame.  Here are almost the entirety of them:

A band!

Dressed up

(During intermission I was lusting after this lamp.  I really need to start updating some of my furniture)

Rachel!  Benjamin!  Myself!  First picture is from dancing on Friday and second is the Tube on Saturday after the play (featuring a new tie I found in London, very last minute).

Rachel and I maintain our tradition of ordering cocktails that have gender aesthetic signifiers that are inverse to our presented genders.

It was a truly wonderful time, and I'm so, so thankful that I made plans to come to London and spend the time here.  It was a delight to watch the city awaken as the spring progresses (I even got to catch a bit of the Hackney half marathon, which was neat) and to share such special moments with Rachel.

On Monday, after a weekend that felt both infinite and instantaneous, I would begin the trip back to France.

Mild pettiness & nonsense food.

So, while I was in Lyon, I intended to cook a few meals, and so I visited an Aldi and a Carrefour for both snacks and groceries.

I also bought one item basically for the pettiness of it.

My Airbnb provided laundry detergent and dishwasher detergent -- but only one pod of each in a twee little cup on the counter, and I was here for an entire week. 🙄

So I found a good laundry detergent that I knew I would want to take with me to London and give to Rachel afterwards (the British are savages and simply do not sell good fragrance-free detergent, and the French one I found--while not truly fragrance free--was a quite mild scent by comparison).

But Rachel doesn't have a dishwasher so I would be leaving that detergent behind.

Aldi sells a very nice pod that I find works very well and is convenient but it was more expensive and for the next guest it was equally likely that my host might choose to be stingy and withhold the remaining pods, so I decided to be cheap AND make that more of a hassle, and bought -- for a single Euro! -- this stupidly large 2 kilogram box of the cheapest dishwashing crystals I've ever seen.  

(You're welcome, everyone who does dishes in this Airbnb for the next million years.)

I also purchased food!

Some of those foods were nonsense.

For example: I was keeping dancer's hours over the weekend.  Though this event was much less nocturnal than Toulouse's fusion event, the dance here was still running until 1:00.  So I purchased this very stupid popcorn.

 "Golden Power" (what a name) is the name of the Aldi house brand of energy drink in France that competes with Monster, and so yes, that's caffeinated popcorn.

Which also tastes like knockoff Monster.

3/10, I don't recommend it, but as a sweet snack that helped keep me awake after classes and before the evening dance, it was useful.

Speaking of sweet snacks:

The French have learned that you can fry almost anything until crispy and it will be delicious.

As demonstrated by:

Yes, that product is a form of snack crisp/chip that's made of fried, lightly sweetened crêpe batter.

Honestly it wasn't bad.

The caramel flavoring tasted very vaguely of Maple syrup though, which is never a flavor I utilize on my crêpes so I found that very disconcerting.  5/10.

But speaking of crêpes. . . I was horrified / delighted [ed note: delightified?  Horrilighted? awful, both of these options] to see this insanity in the Aldi.

Because the Germans have an infinite interest in efficiency and cleverness but perhaps lack the decency that God gave a goat.

Allow me to explain what you are looking at:

This container is mostly empty.  Its primary ingredient, by volume, is air.

Aside from air, it contains flour and emulsifiers and some form of chemically deconstructed egg powder that probably involved sorcery and some salt and sugar and it's instant crêpe mix that you don't even need to dirty a separate container to make.

The container simply tells you to add 400ml of milk directly into the bottle, shake vigorously for a minute, wait a couple of minutes, shake once more, and then pour it straight into your cooking pan, like some sort of cultureless peasant.

Yes of course I had to buy it.

I had to know.

Because surely the mix would be bad? Right? It would clump, it would be poorly balanced, it wouldn't cook right when you used real butter and a properly heated pan and would bubble or get horribly lumpy or watery or both?

Damnit.

Dammit.

They were, honestly, pretty damn good crêpes.

(The variation in the shapes and edges are due to the fact that I couldn't find the detachable handle for the pan I had to use so manipulating the cooking surface was awkward.)

Were they as good as my grandmother's, or Monsieur Brown's? No, of course not (Thank heavens!).

But with both savory (cheese, peppers, ham) and sweet (Confiture des Mirabelles, butter) fillings, and with a little coffee, they made a good breakfast.

Heaven help me, but if this product were available in the states I'd probably keep 2 canisters and a liter of UHT milk in the back of a pantry shelf as a strategic reserve brunch option for treating weekend guests.

8/10.

Dammit.

Let's talk about how great Spaces is

Ok so this is going to sound like a paid endorsement but honestly I just like it when a service feels worth paying for (refreshing in a time when it feels like very corporate service offering in the world is in a constant race to the bottom).

So, let's talk about Spaces (HQ/Regus/etc).

I pay a monthly fee for a private membership with Spaces that gives me 5 days of dedicated coworking in Pittsburgh each month that I almost never use, along with a few other perks, like the power to book a meeting room or private office in coworking facilities across the Spaces office network and also their partner networks (Regus and HQ are two others, and there are a few more as well).

I never book private offices or meeting rooms either, but one of the other perks is the ability to check into the "Business Lounge" in any one of those partner offices.

The Business lounge is basically just the public coworking space / break room area of the small office spaces that the network offers to small businesses, and includes fast wifi, a chill working environment where a business video call is socially acceptable, and often free coffee and a break room kitchen.

I can use those lounges, as many days of the year as I like, anywhere in the world.

The offices are generally open from at least 9 to 5, and in France many of the offices actually run 8:30 to 18:30 hours, which is really excellent for my schedule.

As a third-space for a remote worker, this is basically the platonic ideal.

I've used offices in Pittsburgh, New York, Boston, Chicago, Washington DC, London and Paris, and on this trip alone I've also added Bordeaux, Marseille, Lyon, and Nantes. 

They're often very near city centers and so they're easy to reach by transit, or alongside major train stations.

Some of the touches are really fantastic (great free coffee machines in some places, thoughtfully appointed working areas in others).  In Marseille on this trip the office manager for one center called me after I sent her a request, and recommended I work at the sister location across the street because of the view, which was very sweet of her and was absolutely worth it.

That was this view, I was pleased she'd called to nudge me in that direction.

And in Lyon, a city defined and deeply in conversation with its rivers, the office complex that I used had a sort of moat along one edge of the property, which created this delightfully unnecessary visual effect:

As a result, the four wings of this office building looked like they were on the water, and in the afternoons you'd often see team members standing at the "bow" of the building having a drink.

Sometimes a design choice can really make the difference in how we think about a place, and this one really charmed me.

So yeah, if you're a remote worker and you travel like I do, I highly recommend it -- it's a tax deductible business expense for me, and for a few years my previous employer even compensated me for it as part of our wellness program meant to increase the quality of life for remote employees.

(One observation for anyone else using this sort of approach : HQ and Regus facilities are usually more ergonomic for actually getting work done. 

The Spaces facilities have been appointed mostly to act as comfortable "break room" locations in tandem with the dedicated office rooms, but "comfortable place to have a coffee before going back to work" is different from "I'd like to sit and crunch numbers in this spreadsheet for a few hours.") and so often the chairs recline too much and the table surfaces are the wrong height.)