Pornic, August 2000
We went to Pornic in August 2000 for our summer holidays. We first spent a weekend in the countryside near Paris with some of Yves' friends and then we caught a train from the outskirts of Paris through Nantes on our way to Pornic. We stopped in Nantes for dinner and ate on the terrace of a tavern. We basked in the late afternoon sunshine for around two hours and then we caught our connecting train to Pornic.
At about 11pm we arrived in Pornic. It is a port on Brittany's beautiful jade coast and is a very popular touristic place, particularly in August. When we arrived there unfortunately there was no accomodation to be found! It serves us right for not booking ahead I guess, but we weren't the seasoned travellers then that we think we are now.
We decided to stop in at a bar for a coffee and work out what to do. The bar overlooked the port (most of the shops and attractions in Pornic revolve around the port) and across the road there was a merry-go-round attracting lots of children around it.
An hour later we left the bar and hiked up the hill in the moonlight with our backpacks and a tent we had thankfully borrowed from Yves' friend in Paris. We found a nice little cat on the way, who decided to follow us all night, and settled down with us when we found the perfect place to camp.
The next morning we had breakfast outside a little bakery and pondered over where to look for accomodation. We ended up getting a room overlooking the port at Le Beau Soleil. While we waited for our room to be prepared, we left our bags at reception and took a stroll down to one of the beaches for a look.
Well, we should have known, but the soft sand and the warm sun were a cocktail for a sunburn, especially for two tired people who hadn't slept so well in a tent the night before. We woke up an hour later, looking a little too much like lobsters. Oops!
We spent most of our week eating seafood (Brittany is famous for its mussels and fries, just like Belgium) and exploring the beaches. We went sailing on a 2-man catamaran, took a tourist train around the centre of Pornic and browsed the markets and shops.
