France: Cholet, Carnac and La Baule

So, I recently gate-crashed my parents holiday in France. I flew out to meet them as they had a car and were driving around part of France

Cholet was the home for stage 3 of the Tour De France team time trials. The days we were there very little was open, which was a shame as it had a shopping centre just off the town square. The shops had yellow mats out especially for the cycling and there was an exhibition of past memorabilia. Unlike when we had been in Nice there was no village for the Tour. On the day of the time trials the roads were closed and there were a collection of stands giving away freebies, but some made you answer a question first. The Tour De France is always preceded by a parade of caravans throwing free stuff from the floats. The floats are always pretty fun and people fight over the things that are flung from them. The team time trials were held over several hours with 5-minute intervals between teams. We stayed for about half of the teams as they pass by very quickly, although we were at a point where we could see them leave on one side of the road and arrive back on the other.

Cholet took it's preparations seriously

One of the many 'caravans'

One of the Tour de France teams

Next stop was Carnac, which is also a relatively small town with one main street. We were there for the World Cup semi-final game that France were playing and therefore quite a few places had closed. We took a little tourist train which took us through Carnac, along to Trinitie sur mer where we stopped to look at the harbour, which had a 1000 moorings and was full of yachts. 

Harbour at Trinite sur mer

After an ice cream break the train then took us to Les Alignments – a collection of Mesolithic stones all in straight lines. 

We visited St Cornely's Church. Legend says he was being pursued and turned his pursuers into stone (the megaliths know as Les Alignments). The Church has lots of beautiful stained glass windows and an intricately painted ceiling.

Portion of the ceiling

One of the stained glass windows

We also spent a few hours at the beach in Carnac which had very glittery sand. We also visited a biscuit factory and saw the chef rolling large sheets of butter into bread dough. There were lots of biscuits to sample and buy as well as souvenirs.

Our final stop was La Baule which was the biggest place we visited. There was a lovely Vietnamese restaurant near the train station which I would recommend. Most of the time here was spent on the beach, aided by men with carts going along the shore line selling drinks and ice cream and a number of bars are also situated on the beach. My parents went to look at U-boat pens and war memorials/cemeteries as there are lots of these around France as a result of the two world wars.

View of La Baule from the sea

There are 2 hypermarket chains in France which we enjoy – Carrefour and Auchan. This is the place to do all your shopping of French food and wine to take home as you aren’t paying tourist prices.

The other thing I love about France are the Patisseries. They open early every day with fresh bread and pastries. They are great places to pick up something for breakfast or to treat yourself.

Nantes airport is a very small airport, with nothing else apart from the duty-free shop, so if you are flying out of Nantes go prepared. I would recommend taking food and some entertainment or you may end up getting very bored.