August 31 -- early morning in La Rochelle

.

We happened to wake up quite early, on the 31st.

You know we headed out to the market.

The building on the right houses the indoor part of the market.

I like the way they show the origin of the products.  Ile de Ré is just off the coast near La Rochelle.

I'm not having much luck getting "calibre" translated.  What I find shows it as a cognate for "caliber".....  Google says "Grenaille" is "shot," which I'm not making sense of.....

The inside market.

Really want to try each cheese.....  How else will I know which is my favorite?

I think that "rosette" sausage is what I had for dinner the night before.  It was good.

Big cheeses, too.  I bet most of these are imported.....

Eventually we left the market, and did a bit of window-shopping.

Oh my.

I LOVE my felted slippers, and look, they have hot pink with orange......................

This is the only place on the whole trip that I noticed prices in francs as well as Euros.  You see the "Euro" "E" in the middle of the top price -- that's the way it's said.  "12 Euros 50," for example, is what you would hear if your Monoprix total were 12,50.

(note that, for money, the French use a comma where we would us a period, and a period where we would use a comma)

Ok, enough window-shopping for the moment. Time to get back to the hotel to meet Chantal.


She asked us what we wanted to see, and we asked for "the things Chantal thinks are most interesting."

We started with a stroll through the streets of the old city.

This is Jean Guitton, who was mayor of La Rochelle in the 1620s.  I think most of Europe was at war during at least part of that period, as Protestants and Catholics fought over who could have (and/or do) what.

What an astonishing amount of harm and damage have been caused, in the name of one philosophy or another.........


Guitton was mayor when La Rochelle was put under siege by Louis XIII.  La Rochelle held out for a long time, but eventually succumbed.

Another war-time mayor -- this says Mayor Vieljeux was taken and shot by the Germans in 1944, when he was 79 years old.

So very different, here in the USA, where we have not had war on our soil for over 140 years.....

A very fancy city hall.  This is one of many places we'd never have seen, without Chantal's guidance.

It's fancy inside, too, and has a special room where people get married.

Time for a coffee break.

These little espresso cups are so photogenic....

Study in monochrome.

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

.