The land is flat, near La Rochelle.
Trees, and sunflowers.
I really should have taken pics of the city signs in the train stations.....
Hah! I finally took a pic of a city sign!
Terrible pic, but this is the only one I got, I think, of stone walls. They were everywhere, in England and Scotland, when we were there in 1985 (as were sheep!). I don't think I saw any but these, in France. Makes me wonder if a Briton settled here......
I will leave these in the order in which they were taken -- this is Poitiers, as you will see in a minute when you see the water tower.....
(Looking this over one more time before I post it -- this pic may be the only one for Poitiers that shows functional shutters.)
We are seeing houses made of visible individual stones (didn't see that in La Rochelle).
The top and bottom rows look new, but that middle row.... (as always, click on a pic to embiggen)
Interesting curved corner and balcony.
I realized that I haven't shown you any trains. I suppose they don't look very different from trains everywhere....
Houses backed right up to the cliffs.
I wonder if the person who owned this house when the chemin de fer (literally "iron road") arrived thought it was a good idea.
It's a pretty fancy house.
More houses backed right up to the cliff.
We read that there were houses near Tours that were actually behind the cliff face; carved out of the living rock. I wonder if these may have cellars or something, behind the cliff face.
We have arrived in Tours. This was the only station I encountered in France which had access to the various platforms from the ends of the trains, making trips (with all the luggage) up and down steps unnecessary.
It looks like a lot of people commute on the train.
Sitting in the same place, looking right (above) and left (below).
I bet half of the train station (or its roof, at least) was destroyed in the war.......
So polite, to translate for visitors. I wish we did more of that..........
My daughter went in to reserve our seats from Tours to Paris. It was crowded in the ticketing area, which is why I am sitting out here, with all of the baggage.
All set for the next leg of our journey, we head for the hotel (5 or 10 minutes on foot, even with all the Stuff).
We went through Biarritz the day we took the train from Bayonne to St. Jean de Luz.
We saw these this guy, and his buddies, holding up the second floor of a building which, I believe, was partly city hall and partly the art museum.
Another in our series of spectacularly nice days.
The view from our hotel window. Decidedly more urban than our La Rochelle location, and more residential than our hotel in Bordeaux.
Look at all the different kinds of chimneys.
Fancy railing, with chartreuse cup, across the street from our room.
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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2 comments:
i think La Rochelle was the last area of France occupied by the British before they were finally expelled from the continent however many hundred years ago. So seeing a wall that reminded you of your time in England/Scotland makes sense to me.
I'm sure we heard that it was the last part of France to be surrendered by the British, but for some reason I'm thinking it was Calais.... I suppose different "last parts" may have been surrendered at different times. And it's entirely possible that I remember incorrectly, too. :-)
I think that some number of British troops from WWI and WWII stayed in France after the end of the war. The story in my head was it was one of them who built the stone walls. :-)
It did seem odd to see the stone walls, but no sheep..........
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