(no subject)
It's time to cross one more thing off my week's to-do list before I declare it done with and make my new one for this coming week. My post about a week ago Saturday in Nantes! Probably mostly for my own remembering purposes, at this point, but still.
I arrived just after eleven, with no clear plan except to have lunch at a vegetarian restaurant that I searched out online. Once I arrived, I decided to explore the jardin des plantes, which is across the street from the train station. The stop for the bus to the archives is right outside the entrance, so I'd been thinking about venturing in all week, but hadn't yet done it. I'm glad I finally did - the gardens are far bigger and far more spectacular than they looked from the outside. My favorite thing was discovering an arbutus tree. I didn't know there were different kinds, or that they grew outside Vancouver Island, but there are and they do!
From the gardens, I wandered off in what I thought was the direction of the cathedral, based on the church spires I could see from where I emerged, but which turned out to be a different church. That necessitated a little strategic sign-following, but I wasn't that far afield. I took some pictures and made a circuit of the outside of the cathedral, including stopping by the entrance to the crypt, which I remembered not being able to visit in November 2010. I was pleased to discover that it was open Saturday afternoons, and planned to return after lunch. Then, I headed for where I thought I remembered the vegetarian restaurant was (I had forgotten to write down its address before I left), with a detour to cross the courtyard of the château des ducs de Bretagne and emerged from the main drawbridge across the moat.
My memory of the location of the restaurant was, of course, completely wrong, and I spent the next hour or so wandering in circles between the château des ducs, the tour de Bretagne, and the place du commerce. The wandering was actually pretty enjoyable, I eventually decided there was no way I was ever going to find the restaurant, and so I did something I've never done before. I broke down and used the data roaming on my iPhone to look it up, even at the risk of it costing $15.00/MB. A quick google and then direction search, however, set me straight. You think I'd have remembered from looking at the map how close it was to the archives, but no. In any case, I found it, and went in and had a delicious lunch of squash and tofu pie, buckwheat pilaf, veggies, tea, and orange-chocolate pie. My ability to understand French predictably deserted me every time the waitress asked me something that required an actual response, but I also greatly enjoyed eavesdropping on the table of ladies across from me. They started out on astrology, and by the time I was having desert, one was undertaking some kind of divination on one of the others by means of a wooden ball on a string. I was vastly entertained. I wonder if the elusive population of eccentric French ladies is to be found in vegetarian restaurants? In any case, I had a brief chat with the woman who seemed to be in charge before I left, in which I expressed how pleased I was, as a vegetarian, to find a vegetarian restaurant in France. All in all, I felt pretty pleased about it - eating alone in restaurants is something I find pretty terrifying, and moreso in France where everyone seems to always be out with other people!
After lunch, I wandered from the restaurant across the intersection with the road that goes up toward the archives, which brought me to the banks of the Erdre, which joins the Loire in Nantes. I'd accidentally discovered the park along it the day before when I left the archives and decided to turn down the hill toward the trees at the bottom, rather than up the hill toward the bus stop. Not only is there a park along the river, but there's also a gorgeous Japanese garden on an island in the middle!
By the time I'd wandered up the Erdre, and then up past the archives and back toward place du commerce and the palais des ducs, I was feeling prepared for my next project of the day - book shopping. I'd been meaning to investigate a mystery series I heard a podcast about. That's the point at which I had my unfortunate book buying binge incident, but I was pretty stoked at the time. From the bookstore, I went back to the château des ducs, and this time did the circuit around the ramparts.
Once I'd finished circling the ramparts of the château des ducs, the crypt at the cathedral was open, and I made my long-delayed visit. I have to say it's not the greatest crypt I've ever visited - it wasn't claustrophobia-inducing like the crypt of Chartres, but on the other hand, no merovingian foundations bristling with sarcophagi left in-situ like in the collégiale Saint-Martin in Angers either. It did, however, have a display giving a detailed history of the cathedral, which was both interesting and depressing - can we say original Romanesque choir survived until the nineteenth century, when the architects restoring it decided to replace it with a Gothic choir in the name of the "intentions" of the builders of the late-medieval cathedral nave. FEH.
The most memorable moment of the day came when I emerged from the crypt into the ambulatory of the cathedral and decided to take a walk around it before I left. There was an unexpected knot of people blocking the ambulatory, and they seemed to be watching some kind of video. I stopped to check it out and... holy shit, basically. The cathedral in Nantes is very tall, and very bright white. It's so white because it's been recently restored - there was a terrible fire in the 1970s, which completely destroyed the roof and threatened the whole structure. WELL. I knew about the fire, but I didn't know about the video footage of it. The video footage they were playing in the chapel off the ambulatory. It turns out that my visit was on the fortieth anniversary of that fire, and the Nantes firefighting museum was having a commemorative event for it. This video starts with some footage of the fire - not as dramatic as the color footage they were showing in the cathedral, but you can get the idea. I'm pretty attached to the material remains of the medieval past (seriously, my eleventh-century charters always make me choke up a little, and it's not because I'm allergic to them), so being suddenly confronted with footage of the cathedral roof collapsing in flames? No words.
After I dragged myself away from the cathedral, I wandered around a little more, but I was pretty much done, and I lurked and had restorative pastry and coffee in the train station until the next train home. And that was my day in Nantes, both enjoyable and unexpectedly unsettling.
This entry was originally posted at http://monksandbones.dreamwidth.org/665613.html. Talk to me here or there, whichever you prefer.
I arrived just after eleven, with no clear plan except to have lunch at a vegetarian restaurant that I searched out online. Once I arrived, I decided to explore the jardin des plantes, which is across the street from the train station. The stop for the bus to the archives is right outside the entrance, so I'd been thinking about venturing in all week, but hadn't yet done it. I'm glad I finally did - the gardens are far bigger and far more spectacular than they looked from the outside. My favorite thing was discovering an arbutus tree. I didn't know there were different kinds, or that they grew outside Vancouver Island, but there are and they do!
From the gardens, I wandered off in what I thought was the direction of the cathedral, based on the church spires I could see from where I emerged, but which turned out to be a different church. That necessitated a little strategic sign-following, but I wasn't that far afield. I took some pictures and made a circuit of the outside of the cathedral, including stopping by the entrance to the crypt, which I remembered not being able to visit in November 2010. I was pleased to discover that it was open Saturday afternoons, and planned to return after lunch. Then, I headed for where I thought I remembered the vegetarian restaurant was (I had forgotten to write down its address before I left), with a detour to cross the courtyard of the château des ducs de Bretagne and emerged from the main drawbridge across the moat.
My memory of the location of the restaurant was, of course, completely wrong, and I spent the next hour or so wandering in circles between the château des ducs, the tour de Bretagne, and the place du commerce. The wandering was actually pretty enjoyable, I eventually decided there was no way I was ever going to find the restaurant, and so I did something I've never done before. I broke down and used the data roaming on my iPhone to look it up, even at the risk of it costing $15.00/MB. A quick google and then direction search, however, set me straight. You think I'd have remembered from looking at the map how close it was to the archives, but no. In any case, I found it, and went in and had a delicious lunch of squash and tofu pie, buckwheat pilaf, veggies, tea, and orange-chocolate pie. My ability to understand French predictably deserted me every time the waitress asked me something that required an actual response, but I also greatly enjoyed eavesdropping on the table of ladies across from me. They started out on astrology, and by the time I was having desert, one was undertaking some kind of divination on one of the others by means of a wooden ball on a string. I was vastly entertained. I wonder if the elusive population of eccentric French ladies is to be found in vegetarian restaurants? In any case, I had a brief chat with the woman who seemed to be in charge before I left, in which I expressed how pleased I was, as a vegetarian, to find a vegetarian restaurant in France. All in all, I felt pretty pleased about it - eating alone in restaurants is something I find pretty terrifying, and moreso in France where everyone seems to always be out with other people!
After lunch, I wandered from the restaurant across the intersection with the road that goes up toward the archives, which brought me to the banks of the Erdre, which joins the Loire in Nantes. I'd accidentally discovered the park along it the day before when I left the archives and decided to turn down the hill toward the trees at the bottom, rather than up the hill toward the bus stop. Not only is there a park along the river, but there's also a gorgeous Japanese garden on an island in the middle!
By the time I'd wandered up the Erdre, and then up past the archives and back toward place du commerce and the palais des ducs, I was feeling prepared for my next project of the day - book shopping. I'd been meaning to investigate a mystery series I heard a podcast about. That's the point at which I had my unfortunate book buying binge incident, but I was pretty stoked at the time. From the bookstore, I went back to the château des ducs, and this time did the circuit around the ramparts.
Once I'd finished circling the ramparts of the château des ducs, the crypt at the cathedral was open, and I made my long-delayed visit. I have to say it's not the greatest crypt I've ever visited - it wasn't claustrophobia-inducing like the crypt of Chartres, but on the other hand, no merovingian foundations bristling with sarcophagi left in-situ like in the collégiale Saint-Martin in Angers either. It did, however, have a display giving a detailed history of the cathedral, which was both interesting and depressing - can we say original Romanesque choir survived until the nineteenth century, when the architects restoring it decided to replace it with a Gothic choir in the name of the "intentions" of the builders of the late-medieval cathedral nave. FEH.
The most memorable moment of the day came when I emerged from the crypt into the ambulatory of the cathedral and decided to take a walk around it before I left. There was an unexpected knot of people blocking the ambulatory, and they seemed to be watching some kind of video. I stopped to check it out and... holy shit, basically. The cathedral in Nantes is very tall, and very bright white. It's so white because it's been recently restored - there was a terrible fire in the 1970s, which completely destroyed the roof and threatened the whole structure. WELL. I knew about the fire, but I didn't know about the video footage of it. The video footage they were playing in the chapel off the ambulatory. It turns out that my visit was on the fortieth anniversary of that fire, and the Nantes firefighting museum was having a commemorative event for it. This video starts with some footage of the fire - not as dramatic as the color footage they were showing in the cathedral, but you can get the idea. I'm pretty attached to the material remains of the medieval past (seriously, my eleventh-century charters always make me choke up a little, and it's not because I'm allergic to them), so being suddenly confronted with footage of the cathedral roof collapsing in flames? No words.
After I dragged myself away from the cathedral, I wandered around a little more, but I was pretty much done, and I lurked and had restorative pastry and coffee in the train station until the next train home. And that was my day in Nantes, both enjoyable and unexpectedly unsettling.
This entry was originally posted at http://monksandbones.dreamwidth.org/665613.html. Talk to me here or there, whichever you prefer.