St Nazaire
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
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Very interesting! Lovely sunset pics.
Good to read about your French trip Zhu…all the best.
Beautiful sunset pictures.
@Soleil — It’s not, actually
It’s too close to the harbor, so pretty dirty and dangerous. But the picture somehow makes it look good 
@Seraphine — It’s an ugly city in a funny and interesting way. Not a place to stay overnight but we had fun walking around.
@Seraphine — Mmm… you must be right, I hated Chirac too.
@khengsiong — That’s right! But the sign below in yellow says the bridge is closed anyway… so why all the signs!?
@Linguist-in-Waiting — Yes, not the prettiest place.
@expatraveler — The sunset was wonderful. It’s rare in the summer because it tends to be quite cloudy.
@Celine — Thank you!
How do you pronounce Tintin in French?
It’s always Tin-Tin in English!
Is it Tan-Tan in French?
Merci de parler de St Nazaire. Je ne connais pas mais ça n’a pas l’air très pittoresque.