Nantes was our second stop on our trip to France and also the reason we were there in the first place: Jeffrey’s little sister was studying there for the semester. After spending a few days in Bordeaux (see our walking tour of Bordeaux here), we took the SNCF INTERCITÉS train up to Nantes to spend a few days exploring the city and visiting his sister.
Nantes is the region of Brittany’s largest town and another large port, with a population of half a million people. Nantes, though, felt way different than southern Bordeaux. In Bordeaux, it had been sunny and warm. Our entire stay in Nantes was filled with rainy days and the damp cold that comes with it. Maybe we [...]
Bordeaux was our first stop in our France trip. Roughly three hours away by train, we only had to wait a short while once we arrived at CDG (in first class style!) to board our train straight from the airport.
Jeffrey studied abroad here in the spring of 2009, so he knows this port city like the back of his hand. It was my first time here, and it was so fun for me to explore where he lived. We even got to have dinner at his host family’s restaurant! How cool!
On the Garonne River, the water plays a large part in Bordeaux’s history. And, as the fifth largest city in France (with a population of 1.1 million), Bordeaux is the world’s wine industry center, [...]
Saturday morning, we were hunting around online to figure out what to do. We had heard great things about Fitz & Follwell Co. bike tours (TripAdvisor), but they didn’t appear to handle last minute reservations very well online and the 4-hour bike tour of the whole city left at 10 a.m. from the Plateau Royal district – the opposite side of town from us. Instead, we discovered that Guidatour (http://www.guidatour.qc.ca/) offers walking tours of Vieux Montreal daily during the summer, departing from Notre Dame (luckily, 5 minutes away from us).
Guidatour review: Tickets are about $20/person for a 90 min tour, which includes a brief visit into Notre Dame. Our tour [...]