La Rochelle, Nouvelle Aquitaine (Charente Maritime)

We left the lovely Amboise to make our way to La Rochelle. We drove along country roads and then out to the highway. The interchanges are very good my driver tells me 😉 The tolls are different to Australia. Some of them you get a ticket and then use the ticket to pay at the next toll gate. Others you just pay by card.

The country side is varied. You still see some farms and small towns along the highway but also some towns big enough to have McDonalds!

We saw a lot of sunflowers that looked ready for harvesting or they were dead. Hopefully for harvesting! It must be a common crop because they are everywhere.

Once we arrived in La Rochelle we went on an adventure to find our hotels parking area. Three laps later we found the entrance with big bollards. We eventually asked the hotel and found out that we needed to drive close to them and press a button and they went down. Then after pushing another button to get into the parking area the hotel receptionist directed us down into the very tight car park. It was very tight! I was very glad she was the one giving directions! With me directing no one would be smiling:) She had obviously done it many times.

We couldn’t get into our room until 3pm so off we went to find some lunch. Just up from the hotel was a street of restaurants. Without a booking we were lucky to find somewhere.

After lunch we went off to explore the port of La Rochelle. It was a lovely walk around the water with lots of shops and streets to wander through.

We stopped for a drink and people watched. There were so many people on bikes. Steve spotted a woman dressed up to the nines and smoking a cigarette riding.

We could check into our hotel so went back to get ready for dinner.

The hotel we stayed in, Hotel La Monnaie, was lovely. The staff were so friendly and helpful.

Dinner was at a restaurant called Kase down another street near our hotel full of restaurants. We had the hotel book this one for us in advance.

Steve asked why oysters are always served with butter. The waitress explained that you eat the oyster followed by some bread and butter.

We decided to have profiteroles for dessert. We asked for ice cream to have with them because we weren’t sure if they would come with ice cream. Well! They came with ice cream in between each profiterole stack! Magnifique!

The next day I needed (yes really needed) to go to the hairdressers. It was a great success thanks to Google translate. The hairdresser Tyler had very little English. We were both having a laugh trying to communicate.

I went back to the hotel to collect Steve and we went to the daily food market.

It had a big selection of fresh fruit, veggies, cheese, seafood and meat.

Steve did some shopping for fruit.

We were told the idea was to get a plate of food to eat at the market. We didn’t but we did wish we were in an Airbnb so we could buy some stuff and take it home to cook. There was such a huge choice it would have taken a long time to decide!

We decided to have a wander through the shops. We grabbed a panini for lunch and sat down by the water instead of having a 3 course lunch with a bottle of wine. Our bellies are growing!!

Then we went back to the hotel to relax in the courtyard with some drinks and read our books.

That night where we went for dinner was a bit fancy.

The next day we went across to Île de Ré. It’s an hour by boat.

There is a 3 and a half kilometre bridge to get to the island so we could have driven. We’re glad we didn’t because it was chaos with the thousands of tourists.

Ile de Re is known for its oysters, salt marshes and wine.

The island is also a very popular tourist destination. There are also approximately 17000 residents and with the tourists in summer it gets to around 22000. It is apparently known as the French version of The Hamptons.

We arrived in the main village of Saint Martin De Re and collected some bikes. Ebikes!

It was our first time on ebikes. I loved it! It made getting up hills (very small ones on the island) and catching up to Steve very easy.

There are ten little villages on the island. The cottages in the villages are all white. We rode out to Ars en Re which was 15 kms. It is a lovely little village. The houses were white with colourful shutters, doors and window frames of blues and greens. These are the authorised colours of the village so they look very pretty together.

We stopped for lunch (and a couple of aperols) and then rode down to the local beach.

It was low tide and the beach wasn’t very inviting. At high tide the beaches are apparently beautiful. Which is another reason why people flock to the island.

We then headed to another little village called Loix. It was low tide so it wasn’t very pretty because the island is very marshy. The locals collect salt from the marshes.

There were also lots of oyster farms with little shacks that you could stop at.

After that we rode back to Saint Martin De Re with the rest of the thousands of tourists.

We have never seen so many people on bikes. It was like riding in an organised cycling event. There were all kinds of bikes a lots of kids and dogs being towed in buggies.

Sometimes you’d get stuck behind a big group which is where the ebikes turbo came in very handy.

We had a couple of hours before we had to catch the boat back to La Rochelle. It was a nice place to chill and have dinner.

It was a great day. We cycled around 40kms so we had a well deserved wine (or maybe 2?)

We finished our day and our visit to La Rochelle with a glace. (Practicing my French) It was another beautiful west coast town of France. But so far St Malo is my favourite.