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.
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.)
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.
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