La Rochelle

We woke up this morning feeling well rested and not at all jet laged. After a great hotel breakfast, we hit the road for La Rochelle. The only detour on the fourish hour journey southwest today, was at Le Mans, which wasn't actually a detour at all, because our highway took us right past it and that was the site of the famous race "24 Hours of Le Mans".

There isn't much to be seen here unless you took the tour which I didn't feel we had the time for. But we did get a feel for the scope of this race site as we drove around some of its perimeter protected by concrete barriers and razor wire.

Continuing on our route south, we picnicked again and finally rolled into La Rochelle shortly after four o'clock. Our hotel, The Accostage, proved reasonably easy to find and we checked in, delighted once again to have English spoken.

With help from our hotel lady, we set out on a walk to the historic old harbour of La Rochelle which was an entertaining fifteen minute walk.

The old town comes across as a mini Marseilles with towers in this case, verses forts in Marseilles, to protect the inner harbour.

We did a pretty good job of exploring most of the historic district before finally settling on the restaurant recommended by our hotel - Andre. This is a huge establishment with 9 dining areas, each of them with a unique charm. We were in the the Aquarium room right next to a gigantic aquarium of lobsters - Canadian, apparently.

Dawn and Claude had mini mussels done in a delicious sauce while Carole and I sweet talked the waiter into asking the chef if he'd grill us some sardines - not on the menu. Everything was delicious and we left feeling satisfied but not bloated.

It was 10:00 by the time we finished dinner and we ended the day with a nice stroll back to the hotel, feeling pretty happy about our choice of venues for today.