It was the earliest we have been up since we arrived in Paris and we wouldn't have if we didn't have a train to catch today. Yes, we are off to Nantes so one of us can ride on Le Grand Elephant at Machines de I'iles and see the mechanical sloth. One of us (that would be me) is very excited.
French train stations are as confusing as those in the Nederlands - which platform, where do you stand for your carriage, how do you clean and jerk your 12kg bag up on to the luggage rack - just joking about that last one; we were travelling with just our backpacks.
People were very kind - pointing us in the right direction - telling us where to go. We were at least in the right hall even though we didn't yet know the platform number. That's usually announced 30 minutes before the departure time. We had breakfast there but given how long along the platform we had to walk to our carriage, we definitely should have had a bigger breakfast.
We were upstairs in our carriage so we were able to see the world as it zoomed past at over 300km an hour. We saw wind farms, cows, vineyards, fires (warming the orchard trees to ward off frost?), fog, Bretton architecture (white houses with gray roofs), ruins in the middle of a villages - and blue sky!
Our hotel was within a short walk of the station and our room was ready when we arrived just after 12 noon. It's smaller than we're used to with our hotel in Paris (said almost no-one ever) but had everything we needed including a window which opened for fresh air. We never did find the controls for the air conditioning.
Machines de I'iles opens at 2pm on a Saturday during the colder months and my Le Grand Elephant ride was booked for 3pm. I was not the first one there but I am prepared to argue that I was one of the happiest ones there. LGE did not disappoint. We took a half-hour to get from one end of the 'park' to the other with a crowd of onlookers and followers. Children loved it when LGE sprayed them with water from its trunk.
After the ride, our guide (who spoke a little English) waited patiently as I found a picture of the mechanical sloth on their website and then told me where I could find it and the other mechanical creatures. It takes about 50 minutes for the tour of that area and I joined mid-circuit, just as they were about to show the spider. Would I like to ride in it and control the movement of the head and mandibles? They didn't have to ask twice. There are no pictures of me beaming from ear to ear but I definitely was! Imagine riding LGE and the giant spider in the one visit!
Sooz used to live in Nantes many years ago and I got to see a little of it on the Bolt rides to and from LGE. I know it will have changed a lot and I'm just sorry that she didn't see some of it with me.
Dinner this evening was Pho at a Vietnamese restaurant near the hotel - it doesn't get much better than this especially when the coffee was the third-best since we left Australia. My only regret was that I had it 'to go' and I didn't think to take a second one with us.
Back at the hotel, I watched 'Big Bang' in French. I recognised one of the episodes where Sheldon organises Howard and Bernadette's closet and finds a letter from Howard's father. I almost stayed awake to the end of it to see it again but the excitement of the day - the elephant, the spider, the sloth - had finally caught up with me.