There I took a picture of the sand:

I then walked along the dune:

The sky changed as I then drove inland. When I think of Vendée, at least southern Vendée where my friends live, I think of this flat, damp landscape.

Near the end of the afternoon I was driving back to my friends’ village when I stopped to admire this path:

By the time I returned, the 2-year-old was awake and tearing apart the dress of the doll I’d given her, the 4-year-old was sucking two fingers while watching “Les Simpson,” and the 6-year-old wanted to show me something she’d written. It went something like this: ANDndeMmleNdrEaAeasssdNrea.

Her name is Andréa.

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From spring to fall you might stay for two or three nights and include a half-day or full-day trip to the nearby islands, particularly Ile de Ré which can be reached from La Rochelle by car or bus (via a 1.8-mile bridge), or boat. The best way to explore the Ile de Ré is by bike, easily rented (inquire at Tourist Office). Boats from La Rochelle also go to the tiny island of Aix and the larger island of Oléron, with a view of Fort Boyard between the two. Boats are easily accessible as they leave from the Old Port at the center of La Rochelle.

A Brief History of La Rochelle

Willing to step into the English-French conflict of the Hundred Years War only far enough to secure its advantages, La Rochelle eventually became the largest French port along the Atlantic and remained so until the 15th century.

Another small museum, Musée Rochelais d’Histoire Protestante (La Rochelle Museum of Protestant History), recounts the influence and development of Protestantism in the region during the 16th and 17th centuries, when La Rochelle became one of a handful of pockets across France where the Reformation, having blown in from the east, took root and flourished. In 1570 La Rochelle became one of a four cities designated as Protestant strongholds in France, which allowed it significant independence with respect to dictates from the king and, naturally, from the Catholic Church. Nevertheless, a series of Wars of Religion between Catholics and Protestants marks the history of France in the second half of the 17th century.

City Hall dates from the heyday of Protestant La Rochelle at the turn of the 17th century, when Protestant-cum-Catholic Henri IV was king. A ceramic statue of the king, who had spent time here as a child and adolescent, stands above the courtyard.

The increasingly centralizing policies of (Henri IV’s son) Louis XIII and his Prime Minister (Cardinal) Richelieu sought to rein in La Rochelle’s independence and reassert royal, Catholic dominance in the Protestant strongholds. The Rochelais now found themselves caught between the French movement towards absolutism and the English desire to control trade along the coast. When the Rochelais failed to be sufficiently disturbed by the arrival of the English fleet on the nearby island of Ré, Louis XIII and Richelieu came in person to set French forces in place for the siege of La Rochelle. Jean Guiton, shown in defiance outside of City Hall (see photo inset), was elected mayor during the siege and inspired continued resistance to stand up to royal forces. But after 13 months of siege that had led to the starvation of 65-75% of the population and eliminated any hope that the English fleet would break through the blockade, the Rochelais surrendered.

La Rochelle then lost its privileges and its ramparts, and Catholicism was restored, but the town was physically spared, including its three main towers that can be seen today: the Chain Tower and the Saint Nicolas Tower at the entrance of the port (a chain was drawn across the two towers to prevent unwanted ships from entering the port) and further back the Lantern Tower, one of France’s oldest surviving lighthouses. The Great Clock Tower leads into the old town.

Within a decade after the siege the port had regained its sea legs. The town flourished through much of the 17th and 18th centuries, though two major ports just to the north (Nantes) and to the south (Bordeaux) new drew increasingly heavy traffic.

The digging of a new, deeper port in the late 19th century allowed La Rochelle to gain tonnage. That port was deep and useful enough that during WWII the Germans occupying the coast set up a submarine base here. La Rochelle’s fishing and commercial ports are now on the outer lip of the estuary, several miles from the Old Town, while a closer port called Les Minimes is given over to pleasure boats. Passenger boats for tours and transport to the nearby islands of Ré, Aix, and Oléron leave from the Old Port.

Meanwhile, the 20th century saw La Rochelle’s development as an important center for the rail industry. A rail yard in the works just before the outbreak of WWI proved to be ideally situated for the American arrival into the war in 1917. American ships brought with them locomotive and railway wagons packed in kits that were assembled here. The stately façade of the train station dates from the early 1920s. Over the ensuing decades, a vast suburban industrial site grew to produce trains and subways for use around the world.

The company now called Alstom took over the industrial site in 1972 and immediately set out to develop the TGV, Train Grande Vitesse, the high-speed that has ruled the rail lines of France since the early 1980s and is used in rail networks throughout the world. 

PRACTICAL INFORMATION

Museums, Events, Links

Restaurants

Hotels

© 2008 by Gary Lee Kraut

Go to La Rochelle: A Winter Wanderbout in an Old Port Town, Part I: Night.

Or to La Rochelle: A Winter Wanderbout in an Old Port Town, Part II: Day.

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***

The following morning is sunny and cool. I have breakfast in a café facing the port. I visit the Saturday morning market in and around Les Halles, the covered food market on Place du Marché.

I meet with the president of the La Rochelle Tourist Office. He tells me much I didn’t know about local history, local politics, local characters and town planning, while we drink bad coffee.

I return to the Old Town. A haze of clouds is moving in.

I enter the massive, graceless cathedral looking for a chapel of ship-theme ex-votos. Every port town has one. A sign tells me that 2008 is the 400th anniversary of the founding of Quebec.

There’s a little crafts market on the vast square in front of the cathedral. One man sells fruit-scented fruit-shaped candles. He invites me to smell them, which I do, but the granny smith candle doesn’t smell like a granny smith apple, the tangerine candle doesn’t smell like a tangerine, and so on. I tell him so. He answers that the problem is my nose not his candles, but that they do smell stronger when they’re lit, only 2 euros. I tell him they’re pretty anyway.

I admire the proud 19th-century décor of Café de la Paix. I love those historical grand cafés even when they no longer exude much in the way of class. A waiter asks if I want lunch. I say no, just looking, and leave.

I walk down a street paved with stones brought from the banks of the Saint Lawrence River that were used to weigh down ships carrying beaver furs from Canada. The full story of that trade is told in the Musée du Nouveau Monde (Museum of the New World), where tapestries, painting, and sculptures show how Europeans perceived the New World as an innocent and exotic child, like the Indian at City Hall, and maps in the museum show the Americas as unformed continents, the definition of their eastern seaboards giving way to vague interiors, which is pretty much as I imagine them even today. I consider going into the museum now that I know that 2008 is the 400th anniversary of the founding of Quebec, but I visited the museum 10 years ago and don’t feel like going back.

So I go to the Natural History Museum, expecting the worst.

The Natural History Museum

The man at the front desk clearly is not the usual ticket seller; he’s much too happy to assist me to actually have the job. I ask if I’m the museum’s only visitor and he says cheerfully, “No, a family of four came in just two minutes ago and others are sure to follow after lunch, it’s barely 2.” After he gives me my ticket he comes around the counter to show me the map of the museum and then spontaneously summarizes the floor plan as follows: “Right behind you in that first room you’ll see exhibits about the coast and the marshes, then you go downstairs to see fossils and, you know, other fossils. Then you go upstairs where you’ll see stuffed animals, bears and everything, and birds. Then on the last two floors you’ll see a lot of things brought back by, you know, people who go places and, you know, bring things back.”

It’s the best introduction to a museum I’ve ever heard.

I can’t resist asking him if he actually works here. He says no, he’s just filling in for “one of the girls” for a few minutes.

The Natural History Museum does indeed have a wonderful collection of things and stuff. In the section of primed, stuffed, and mounted animals, insects, and fish from the high times of naturalism of the late 18th to early 20th centuries, I feel thankful that there are people in this world curious enough to go places and bring back things that don’t bear trademarks.

In the sections on anthropology and shamanism I understand that the progress of civilization is food, shelter, and freedom from man-to-man violence and from religious terror and that whatever steps back from that can still be called civilization but not progress.

The highlight of the museum for me is the giraffe. It’s found on the landing between two floors. This is the stuffed remnant of what had been the first live giraffe brought to France, a gift from the viceroy of Egypt Mehemet Ali to France’s King Charles X in 1825. The giraffe debarked at Marseille then walked in a grand parade all the way to Paris, where it then lived for 17 ½ years in the Jardin des Plantes (Botanical Garden).

I’d previously thought that Mehemet’s greatest gift to Charles was the Obelisk, originally from the Temple of Luxor, that he gave in 1829 and that now stands gold-tipped at the center of Paris’s Place de la Concorde. Yet the giraffe and the affection it spawned seem far more meaningful. In themelves, the sight of the giraffe and the way those bare facts play on the imagination make standing in this stairwell worth the trip to La Rochelle.

The Aquarium

Travel snobs believe that knowledge is primary when visiting museums but it is at best fourth after marvel, the restrooms, and other visitors’ expressions, all at which are found at La Rochelle’s biggest draw of a museum, the Aquarium, one of Europe’s largest.

Using the audio-guide I explore the underwater world for nearly two hours and hear a host of fascinating tidbits about creatures living in all kinds and depths of sea. I quite enjoy discovering the diversity of those worlds you’d got to be crazy to want to put tanks on your back to see in situ. But the best part about this museum experience is listening to English children asking their parents “why” questions about bizarre fish and hearing the parents answer “That’s just the way they are.”

Between “things brought back by people who go places and bring things back” and “that’s just the way they are” the Natural History Museum and the Aquarium at La Rochelle sum up all that I ever hope to encounter in a museum.

The church bells are ringing when Didier meets me by the port at 6, exactly 24 hours after my arrival. I tell him I’ve missed him. He says he doesn’t believe me because if it were true I wouldn’t have waited so long to come back.

© 2008 by Gary Lee Kraut

Go to La Rochelle: A Winter Wanderbout in an Old Port Town, Part I: Night.

Or to La Rochelle: Part III, History and Practical Information.

The post La Rochelle: A Winter Wanderbout in an Old Port Town, Part II: Day appeared first on France Revisited - Life in Paris, Travel in France.

I am not a seafaring man. My ancestors took several billions of years to evolve from the deep; I see no reason to go back. But give me a safe old port town on a misty evening, even on a cold winter’s night like this, and I’ll wander about for hours as if looking for chance.

It’s Friday evening, late December. Church bells have just rung 6 o’clock. The streets are full of townies, visitors from the countryside, and Brits on holiday.

This is my fourth or fifth visit to La Rochelle in the past 15 years. I’ve visited in different seasons; I’ve stayed in several of its better hotels and now one of its lesser; I’ve come on a romantic getaway, on a weekend writing retreat with a friend, and on a press trip. The love lapsed, the writer friendship cooled, and the book long out of print, the only trace I have of those visits is my fondness for wandering this town.

This time I’ve come for a 24-hour portside pause before my good friend Didier comes to pick me up to spend a few days with him, his wife, and their three little girls in the flat, soggy landscape of Vendée to the north of La Rochelle.

Despite the cold, or perhaps because of it, I’m looking forward to those countless steps that are necessary to find the perfect place to come in from the cold—steps of indecision that no lover, or friend, or press attaché would endure. Having company requires making decisions, otherwise someone is sure to get edgy. Solitary wandering thrives on indecision, edgy comfort being one of the rewards of such travels.

The shops are busy and brightly lit, the weekenders have arrived, teens are texting where and when to meet, little kids are getting cranky, lines form in the bakeries, and no one stops at a stand of local writers selling their wares at the little square in the pedestrian zone.

I speak with one of the writers long enough to feel guilty that I’m not going to buy his murder mystery that takes place on Ile de Ré, an island two off the coast, and so promise him that, not wanting to carry a book around with me all evening, I’ll be back tomorrow. “I’ll be here,” he says, well aware that I won’t.

La Rochelle City Hall

I enter the courtyard of City Hall, the centerpiece of the Old Town. A dozen others mill about examining the details between the showy crenelation of the outer wall and the decorative stonework of the arcades. I find the details that I remember from previous visits: there’s Prudence, there’s Justice, there’s Force, there’s Temperance adding water to her wine; there, decorating a keystone in the corner, is the sculpted head, circa 1600, of an American Indian child with headdress. There’s the ceramic statue of Henri IV, France’s Protestant-cum-Catholic king, overlooking the courtyard.

There on the square outside City Hall, stands a statue of the mayor during the latter half of the great siege of 1627-1628, Jean Guiton, chin forward, right fist clenched, left hand on his sword.

I walk on through the Clock Tower to the Old Port and leave the crowds for a nighttime view from the other side of the port, where I see La Rochelle’s three main medieval towers and the lights strung along the waterfront. There’s the Chain Tower and the Saint Nicolas Tower at the entrance of the port. There, further back, is the Lantern Tower, one of France’s oldest surviving lighthouses.

Le Mail – The Mall

I’m cold. I should go inside somewhere. I head back to the active side the port then walk up rue Saint-Jean-du-Pérot, La Rochelle’s main restaurant row, where tables are beginning to fill. The end of the street is like a barrier beyond which no pedestrians venture on this cold night.

I continue on though, past Richard Coutenance, the town’s premier restaurant, past the small zoo I know to be back in the dark in the park, and over to Le Mail (The Mall), the long stretch of lawn bordered one side by a row of elegant homes and apartments and on the other by a hedge of bushes and trees. Behind the bushes there’s a beach. I stand there for a minute in the bone-chilling damp looking out to the estuary at night. No, I am not a seafaring man. I return to Le Mail.

I look into the restaurant also called Le Mail. The restaurant is stunningly Hopperesque at night, full of light and grief and solitude and warmth. A wonderful sight, as well as a nice place for ice cream, I remember, on a sunny day.

Oysters at the Casino

Beer, then dinner

I have a pint in a bar on the port where the bartender and I watch without commentary the World’s Strongest Man competition on TV.

I have a second pint in a bar on the far end of the port where everyone is half my age and seems to be anticipating the smoking ban set to go into effect in three days by smoking incessantly. I didn’t want the second pint, I just wanted to go into that bar because it might be the last smoky bar I enter before the ban goes into effect; I would remember it that way, as former smokers will remember where they were when they had their last cigarette. The people are quite friendly in here, as am I, so that I’m almost tempted to order another beer, until I remember three things: I’m looking forward to the smoking ban, two beers is enough for me, food is important in France.

I examine every menu along the port and on rue Saint-Jean-du-Pérot, the town’s premier menu trolling street. I examine them again. And finally enter a restaurant because I like the placement of an empty table.

There are three couples nearby: two late teens on a first date that appears to be going exceedingly well; an English couple in their mid-30s examining the menu and looking about the room as though surprised to find that they’d been teleported here from their local pub; a French couple in their mid-50s who may have been the model for The Eagles’ “Life in the Fast Lane.”

I take notes. I eat well.

Roulette at the Casino

Then I return to Le Mail, past the Hopperesque restaurant of the same name, and back into the casino.

There are lots of people there now. The two roulette tables and two blackjack tables are fully occupied and surrounded by dozens of onlookers. I hear five languages: French, English, Dutch, Arabic, and something being muttered by a woman to a man whom I replace when he gets up empty-handed from the roulette table.

I don’t really want to play, just to sit there, but as I did with the second pint I get some chips. They’re green.

Soon enough I find myself thinking numbers, as one inevitably does, twos and threes in this case. For over an hour my stacks of chips rise and dwindle like better judgment, and just before they’re extinguished I share my last 15 chips between the numbers 2, 3, and 27.

The winning number is 23.

If I’d followed my instincts a little more I’d now have a basket of oysters, a lot of green chips, and possibly a murder mystery signed by a local author. Instead I have a long, cold walk back to the hotel.

© 2008 by Gary Lee Kraut

Go to La Rochelle: A Winter Wander in an Old Port Town, Part II: Day.

Or to La Rochelle: Part III, History and Practical Information.

The post La Rochelle: A Winter Wanderbout in an Old Port Town, Part I: Night appeared first on France Revisited - Life in Paris, Travel in France.