We made it. Finally. From Paris, we took the train directly to Nantes, my home­town, the city where I grew up and from where I gladly escaped as soon as I turned 18.

Of course, we were both a bit tired after spend­ing almost two days in Mon­treal air­port. That prob­a­bly explained why my bank card was swal­lowed at the first ATM I used and why we didn’t notice we were using the wrong plug for my computer.

For the bank card, it was my fault. I typed the PIN in wrong three times in a row. Duh. I was — God knows why — using my old PIN code, the one I had when I was liv­ing in France… 7 years ago. With my Cana­dian debit card.

For the plug story… Cana­dian and French plugs are dif­fer­ent so you need an adapter for the power sup­ply (for my lap­top). I got one from a friend before I left but — once again, Gods knows why — I some­how didn’t notice there were no way it could fit in my lap­top plug. So we went to the FNAC (= French HMV) and bought a huge Swiss-made-lifetime-warranty-works-in-129-countries adapter. Of course, it wasn’t made to fit Cana­dian plugs. We ended up buy­ing a new power sup­ply for my laptop.

Then we slept for about 14 hours.

Nantes hasn’t changed much. Of course, stores did: the then pop­u­lar cafés are now closed and new trendy places opened. The streets look old and the archi­tec­ture is beau­ti­ful. Every­thing is small: peo­ple, streets, roads, cars and shops. I showed Feng around. It’s actu­ally a lot of fun to see the city as a trav­eler, a Cana­dian. I’m bored and bor­ing when I’m French.

One of the nicest place in Nantes is the Cas­tle of the Dukes of Brit­tany. Even though it was rain­ing a bit (Nantes… but still, the weather is very mild for us after the harsh Cana­dian win­ter!), we had fun climb­ing the fortification.

And then we walked around the city for hours. I got to see the new cour­t­house… It’s brand new and highly con­tro­ver­sial, since the archi­tect made it all black: the pic­ture below was taken inside it. Weird atmos­phere, isn’t it?

And finally we saw… the famous ele­phant. A group of artists liv­ing in the island of Nantes (not an actual island but a for­mer ship­yard in the mid­dle of the Loire River) is work­ing on these mechan­i­cals ani­mals and show­ing them around the city. Here is the ele­phant… directly inspired of Jules Verne’s books — the famous writer was born in Nantes, of course!

Being home as a trav­eler is the best. Ever. I just wish I would stop say­ing “thank you” (instead of “merci”) and “sorry” (“désolé”) to French people!

Related arti­cles:

1. A French Castle
2. Rebel France (1÷2)
3. His­toric Nantes
4. Nantes’ Ele­phant
5. Nantes By Night