A Nice Adventure — Week 2
Bonjour! It’s Michelle writing this week’s blog.
It’s been another busy week as we have continued our travels in France. After leaving Lachanau we continued on to La Rochelle. On the way we made a couple of stops — one at the Pont Transbordeur in Rochefort and an impromptu stop at Château Fort de St Jean D’Angle.
The Pont Transbordeur, or transporter bridge, was built in 1900 and involves a platform suspended from a cable that moves across the river below. It’s quite a sight and feat of engineering, and with the nearby freeway bridge carrying the main bulk of passing traffic, the transporter bridge provides a serene and novel journey for cyclists and pedestrians. These kinds of bridges seem to have had their heyday during the late 1800’s — nowadays only a few remain in the world (we previously visited one in Bilbao, Portugal).
A chance sighting from the freeway led us to Château Fort de St Jean D’Angle, a classic medieval European-style castle built during the 12th century. We spent a good couple of hours exploring the grounds, having a hand at the many games and activities on offer and watching the demonstration of a trebuchet (which turns out to be a kind of catapult, not just a Microsoft font!)
On our arrival at La Rochelle that evening, we were quite charmed by our choice of home for the next few days. La Rochelle is a historic port city with three medieval towers gracing its entry channel, and was bustling with activity, buskers, markets and people everywhere. A combination of impressive architecture with a compact harbour that was virtually closed to car traffic created an intriguing atmosphere of both grandeur and intimacy. We were delighted with the location of our apartment near the heart of the old port.
Some inclement weather on the first day led us to the Maritime Museum from where, by chance, we came across the sight of a leisure sail boat being hoisted out of the water by a boat crane, not something you see every day! We also enjoyed different views of the city — firstly from the local ferris wheel and then from the top of the historic Lantern Tower, which has been used variably as a watch tower, lighthouse and prison through the various centuries since medieval times.
On our second day we visited the nearby island, Île de Ré, which is a popular holiday spot. The island is known for its salt flats, and has an extensive network of bicycle paths. So naturally, what to do but hire some bicycles and join the streams of people cycling around to explore the island? Once again, as in Lachanau, we were struck by the sheer number of people out for a ride. We’ve cycled in so many places around the world before, but the bicycle culture that we’ve seen in this past week is really quite something. It is different from the sense of commuting that we’ve seen previously in Europe (or even China back in the 1990’s now that I think of it), or in the sense of cycling being more of a niche activity undertaken by enthusiasts (lycra-clad or otherwise), but truly just hundreds of people and families out for a leisurely cycle streaming past each other on well-made dedicated bike paths.
After packing up from La Rochelle, we spent a day at Futuroscope, a multimedia-based theme park. We had visited once before the kids were born, so it was fun to take them back again. Unfortunately, being summer and French school holidays, the queues for the major rides were far too long to be worth waiting for, but we caught a few shows and displays as well as some interactive activities.
Then it was on to Nantes where we visited the Les Machines de l’Île, which we had also previously visited. Back in 2010 we rode on the giant machine elephant that was already in operation. We also saw various creatures that were being built for the 3-storey high carousel that was under construction. Each carousel ride is a machine of its own with various levers, handles and pedals that enable the rider to move different parts of their creature. While watching the demonstration, we said to ourselves, “If we ever have children, it would fantastic to bring them back to see this!” And so now we fulfilled our promise and brought those then-hypothetical and now real children to Nantes. The experience did not disappoint. Having ridden the Minotaur at the Halle de la Machine in Toulouse a couple of weeks ago, we didn’t feel the need to ride the elephant this time, but followed it around, carefully dodging the sprays of water from its trunk! Our highlight was riding the now-completed 3-storey carousel, resplendent with its full complement of creatures. It was so much fun that we spent a good couple of hours exploring and riding it multiple times.
From Nantes we proceeded onwards, heading deeper into Brittany and to the far northwest corner of France that is at the opposite end of the country to where we will be living in Nice. As so often when travelling, it’s the unplanned stops that can throw up gems of experience. While driving towards Brest, we passed through a town called La Gacilly where it was impossible to miss half a dozen huge photos plastered on the buildings. Clearly something was going on — we stopped off and found ourselves in an open air photography festival. We wandered around the streets of La Gacilly, enjoying not only the photographs but also the picturesque streetscape and architecture of the town. By far our favourite compositions were by a photographer called Erik Johansson — in surrealist style, they combined everyday scenes with elements of impossibility and unexpected twists.
We also stopped at the whimsical Museum of the Junkyard Poet, the brainchild and labour of love by artist/sculptor/poet Robert Coudray. His creations and structures — mostly made from recycled materials — are almost like three-dimensional versions of Michael Leunig’s cartoons. Not for the first time, we marvelled at the wonderful combination of ingenuity, engineering and artistry that we have observed many times in French culture.
We’ve been travelling around France for a couple of weeks now, and it’s been interesting to observe the public health practices in place to minimise the transmission of Covid-19. France is currently recording a 7-day average of over 20,000 new Covid-19 cases per day, which is obviously incredibly high compared to Australia, but significantly less than the 50,000 cases per day observed during the first wave of 2020. The vast majority of current cases are amongst unvaccinated people. Overall practices here are not so different from Australia, and are largely sensible. Given the higher rates in France, mask-wearing is almost universal for adults indoors and quite common in crowded outdoor spaces, and a lot more children wear masks here. Hand sanitiser is readily available and we’ve come across Covid-19 testing stations and vaccination centres.
Check in systems for contact tracing don’t seem to be as common in France, although occasionally we have been asked to provide details. Similarly, density limits for the number of people are sometimes in place, but not always so. One of the niftier systems we’ve seen was at the Aeroscopia museum where the number of people in a given space are counted and controlled through an electronic gate system.
France’s vaccination rate has just passed 60% of total population, up from 53% a couple of weeks ago. Some of their current regulations may be prescient of policies that may come into place for Australia at a future date, like the equivalent of a “vaccine passport”. Since mid-July the French government has made a requirement for people attending cultural and leisure venues with more than 50 people (including museums, swimming pools, gyms, theatres, cinemas) to present a “health pass” showing either full vaccination against Covid-19, a negative test result from the past 48 hours, or a certificate of having recovered from Covid-19 in the prior 6 months.
Having not yet registered as residents in the French health system yet, before we left Australia we were diligent about getting suitably authorised documents to show that we were fully vaccinated — printed copies of our Medicare statements and also official WHO books with our vaccination records, all signed by our local GP. We were pleased to find that our Medicare documentation was accepted whenever we were required to show proof of vaccination. We then took the next step of showing our electronic records on our phones — and voila, also accepted! Now much easier than carrying around the hard copies with us everywhere.
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Outside Les Bassins de Lumières in Bordeaux, we also saw a testing tent for people who do not have the required documents. Once admitted into a venue everyone still wears masks, but it is additionally comforting to know that other people who are moving around the same space are also of reduced risk of being infectious.
From this week the requirement for a “health pass” will be extended to include restaurants, cafes, long service transport, non-emergency medical facilities and numerous other locations. It will be very inconvenient to move around without a health pass going forward.
And so we travel onwards. We are currently in Brest, and our journey from here will take us gradually back eastwards, then onto Paris, before journeying back south in the coming weeks. Until next time, au revoir!
