We came back from Paris before Bastille Day and decided to spent it on the Atlantic coast, in the family house. This is where I spent most of my summers as a kid and a teen and I hadn’t been back there since 2002. At the time, I was coming back from Australia and New Zealand and I had spent the entire summer almost locked in a room trying to study for my university exams the following September.
This is a sleepy village 45 minutes from Nantes. Its claim to fame is the cookie factory. Other than that, there isn’t much: a roundabout (French love roundabouts and even the smallest village has one), a church, a bar-tabac (a small corner store) and a news agent. I both loved and hated the place as a teen. The beach is only a few minutes’ walk from the house and going there is fun, yet it gets very lonely after a while. Summer seemed to stretch forever: between going to the market and biking to the news agent to buy a magazine once in a while, there wasn’t much to do. I’m the oldest kid in the family and my sister, the second oldest, is 6 years younger than me. I spent entire evenings shouting at a bunch of kids (brother, sister, cousins…) who kept on sneaking into my room and yet I was bored at the grownups table at dinner time.
This was like a blast from the past for me. Feng and I didn’t have a car so we had to walk everywhere, like when I was a teen. Because nobody lives in the house full-time, there is no T.V and no Internet connection. I found most of the magazines I had left the last time I was there, eight years ago. I found my old swimsuit and my old posters. I found peace and quiet.
The coast had been badly damaged by TotalFina’s Erica oil spill in 1999 but little remains of the disaster today. I remember, at the time, there were pools of oils washed upon the shore and it looked like it would never be clean again. I guess ten years have passed…
You can follow our French trip here on Flickr: France (2010).
Wow, I would kill for an ocean-side country home, I just love the Normandy/Britanny coast it’s so beautiful an quiet 🙂
Even small town has a castle…
Malaysians also love roundabouts, but today they are a source of traffic gridlock.
I like that feeling of visiting some place that was significant from the past. Even my parents place in the Philippines was quite nostalgic even though it’s only been 3 years since I last was there. I actually wonder how it would feel like to visit Japan again, as I haven’t been there since 2000, and I would like to see what changes have occurred in the places that I used to frequent when I was still a teen.
@Cynthia – My grand-parents generation was overall lucky, at the time buying houses or building them was much easier, and real estate was cheaper too.
@khengsiong – tell me about it! In France, there is a roundabout every like ten meters it seems.
@Linguist-in-Waiting – It’s weird to visit places that don’t change much over the year, like this small village. Even Nantes, my hometown changes a little bit…
Sounds like a nice play to visit for a short time. Its strange how some places never change but finding your same magazines is a hoot.
It looks like great fireworks.
you take such awesome photographs, zhu!
and yummm, are those butter cookies that are made in pornic? to me, that is enough. i could stay there forever. butter cookies and strawberries and red wine.
a summer in your family house sounds wonderful. nothing to do. nowhere to go. time lengthens into almost forever. i haven’t had a summer like that since university. i’d give up tv and the computer for a summer with books and beaches and nothing else to do, yes.
Roundabouts French?
No way!
I thought they were British! Ha ha…
Bastille day celebrations seems to be really stunning from these pics of fireworks. Really nice place to visit.
Did you go to eat a “niniche”?
How big is this little village. It looks so quaint and relaxing and amazing… How cool!! The fireworks remind me of Victoria a lot and how we can see that stuff here on the West Coast, Great pics!