Some days are sunny, some days are cloudy and some days are—gasp!—rainy. I grew up in Nantes, I can take the rain. In Canada, people don’t even go out when rain is forecast. In Nantes, it’s business as usual, most of us don’t even bother with umbrellas or raincoats. Getting soaked is part of the deal when you live close to the Atlantic Ocean.
My brother, my mother, Mark and I decided to follow the Loire River, an interesting scenery when the sky is grey. We crossed the bridge to the Isle of Nantes, got soaked, but we kept walking past the usual touristic attractions. We ended up at the former Marché d’intérêt national, a wholesale market for fruit, vegetables and agricultural produce. Industrial wasteland, old train tracks, empty buildings. We goofed around—we were the only ones around—sunny, cloudy, rain. The entire afternoon was like this, unpredictable and laughably so.
At one point, I stopped at the bakery to buy Mark a brioche au sucre (sweet bread with sugar). My mom, my brother and Mark waited outside. When I stepped out, one minute later—just the time to say “bonjour, une brioche, merci,” it was pouring and I had to run across the street to the bus stop where they had taken shelter.
It could have been a miserable afternoon but we had a lot of fun. We came home five hours later, soaked, dirty and happy.
Life is cool when you embrace it.
A few pictures are a bit blurry because wiping the water off the lens when you’re soaked just doesn’t work…
C’est tout un autre monde que tu nous fais découvrir! Merci de l’avoir partagé. Je suis ces derniers billets avec beaucoup d’intérêt.
Brad 😉
Merci! 🙂
Oh the baked goodies of the French cuisine, when I go to your latest photoset on Flickr, I keep going back to those photos of bakery products. Brioche sounds delicious, just checked it out on Google 🙂
The third photo is my personal favorite, I like roads make like this, I think it is so European. There was one road like this where I lived in Delhi and that was my favorite bit of my walk home from the bus stop. Then they dug it up to make the new style road, I hate them.
Mark pushing his uncle, c’est très drôle
French bakeries are pretty amazing. Just the smell of butter… in Ottawa, I go to the Chinese bakery where sweet breads are very similar to brioche 😉