August 30 -- our first evening in La Rochelle

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Another nice hotel.

At some point I realized it might be interesting to show our hotel rooms. I wish I'd done that from the beginning. With bathrooms.

Note my excellent 80-cent (Euro) Monoprix shopping bag.  It's the light-weight nylon kind you could fold up and stick in your backpack or other bag, to have handy in case you buy a baguette.  Or goat yogurt.  Or applesauce with rhubarb.

Wooohoooo! What have we here???  The only kettle available for our use on this trip.  I made good use of it.

Even more amazing, look what we have here!!!

Yes, people, one of those teeny ice trays!!!! Our very own ice!!! I refilled the tray, right then. But we never used it. The weather was so beautiful in La Rochelle that I never felt I really wanted ice to go in my tea.

In addition to these amenities, this hotel also had really nice soap. Grapefruity.

This hotel also had the only shower we couldn't figure out how to operate. I put the curved sliding shower door back on its track in Bordeaux, so that when the maintenence guy showed up, it was already fixed. But neither I nor my daughter could figure out how to get the water turned on in the shower in La Rochelle.  (It was very Moderne.....)

We finally had to call down to the desk, who sent someone up to show us.

You had to turn the big knob really hard. Ok. We can do that. We just didn't want to break anything.....

We had a good laugh about being idiots, but I don't think that was the first time they'd had to send someone up to show the customers what to do.....



Our shower adventures were in the future at this point.

Here's the view out our window.

This is just a bit to the left of the above.  That dome above the trees is the train station.

Heading out to find the tourist office, and to identify the restaurant in which we will dine.

Very Large purple pot.

La Rochelle is  full of tourists and the things they want to buy.

A gorgeous day.

More red geraniums. Wouldn't you love to see the inside of that apartment? With all that light from two sides?

This pair of towers guarded the mouth of the harbor, once upon a time.

This tower is farther out toward the ocean.

This street is called "On the Wall."

More houses on "On the Wall."  Note functional shutters in use.

The sun was thinking of setting.

Same pointy tower as above, in different light.

A different look at the houses on "On the Wall."

At this point I returned to the hotel to meet the foodie, who had been checking out the dining establishments' boards of fare.

She chose André for us, which was a very good choice.  The fish was delicious, as was the dessert ... a salted-caramel extravaganza (pastry, cream, apples, some sort of fluffy caramel stuff, caramel sauce....).  Yum.

See her post on this day and this lovely dinner (with her usual excellent pics) here.

After dinner, we walked back out toward the ocean, where I had been earlier.

Love the lights at the top.....

In order to facilitate chronological traverse of these posts, here is a link to the post that comes after this one.

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