Woke up at 09:00, out by 10:00, sunny and going to get to 22c today.
Walked to the tram stop to go to the market, stumbled upon one of the sights I had listed to see, an old shopping arcade, an Art Nouveau building with shops on 3 levels.
Carried on walking and found a place for breakfast and sat outside, had a plain croissant, hot chocolate and orange juice each.
Got the tram to the market, public transport was free on the weekend but it was only 3 stops. The market was probably the biggest so far, with shops inside and stalls outside, and being Saturday morning, was packed. Most of the stands had queues, and were selling the usual fare of seafood, cakes, bread, meat and the stalls outside were fruit and veg.
All of the seafood vendors had live crabs or langoustines.
We bought some baguettes, fruit and pate for dinner later, then left the market to look for lunch. I found a Vietnamese place nearby so we fancied a change and went there. On the way we happened to pass a church that was on my list of places to visit. Something else we just happened across. The church had some nice stained glass windows. While we were there, the priest (or staff) were covering up some of the statues with purple cloth, I thought because there was also a ladder and some constuction going on.
We found the restaurant, it was a tiny place that also sold Asian groceries run by an elderly couple. The husband spoke Mandarin so Song could tell him what we wanted. Song had a Pho, and I had a Bun Bo vermicelli noodles and we sat at one of the 4 tables. The food was OK, not Melbourne quality (even the Bahn Mi in Vietnam we had last year wasn’t Melbourne quality).
We hopped on another free tram and went back to the main square, to get back to the hotel to drop off the shopping. On the way we passed a restaurant with a huge queue outside (L’Entrecote); I looked it up on Google, it is a local institution where they only serve 2 dishes, a walnut salad to start and steak and chips for main, for 22 Euro.
Walked back to the main area and into another church, with some more nice windows – and I saw more statues covered in purple cloth. Obviously something going on, not being religious didn’t know so Googled – it’s a tradition to do with Lent, called Passiontide.
After dropping off the shopping at the hotel and changing to cooler clothes (it was 22C now), we headed back to the bus stop to go out to try and get some photos of the Ile de Nantes from the riverside (free travel, yay). However, like the bus in La Rochelle, it turned out that the area wasn’t very good. So we got back on the bus to the town centre.
We then walked to an antique shop that was closed yesterday, but they didn’t have anything of interest, so back to the hotel. Decided to stay in, we have a full day tomorrow and there are only a couple of things to see. We passed a Paul bakery on the way back, and will probably eat brunch there.