I swear, I won’t do it again. For the first and only time in my life, I fol­lowed in Sarkozy’s foot­steps: we vis­ited the same city only a day apart. Thanks God we didn’t meet.

For our last week-end in France, Feng and I went back on the Atlantic coast. We spent a few days with my fam­ily and left to explore St Nazaire, a few kilo­me­ters away. The town isn’t pretty: it was heav­ily bombed dur­ing WWII and 80% of it was destroyed. It was rebuilt right after the war in a some­what min­i­mal­ist style — under­stand one main street and square build­ings scat­tered around.

We walked around the har­bor and I felt like in Pink Floyd’s Ani­mals cover. The city is very indus­trial and it focuses on ship­build­ing (mostly cruise ships nowa­days), aero­nau­ti­cal engi­neer­ing and port activ­i­ties. As for art, some Tintin posters are scat­tered around the har­bor, as the comic-strip reporter writ­ten by Hergé famously stopped by St Nazaire in the album The Seven Crys­tal Balls.

We came back in the evening and enjoyed a beau­ti­ful sun­set on the beach, back in St Michel.

You can fol­low our French trip here on Flickr: France (2010).

Tintin in St Nazaire

Dock­ers’ Union Building

Fish­ing in the Harbor

Fish­ing in the Harbor

The Indus­trial Side

Seag­ull	Wel­come to… the Machines…
The Beach	The Har­bor

This is why I failed my dri­ving test in France… twice!

Sun­set on the Beach

Sun­set on the Beach

Related arti­cles:

1. St Malo — A Walled City
2. Beau­ti­ful Beaches Of Brazil
3. Bondi Beach
4. Tulum, Playa y Pueblo
5. Bastille Day in France