On our way north we stopped in the town of Nantes. Our main reason for stopping here was to see Les Machines de L’Ile. This is a museum of sorts built on the old shipyards of the Isle de Nantes. An enormous warehouse contains a collection of machines, which have been modeled on the creations and imaginings of Leonard Di Vinci and Jules Verne. Each creation has multiple moving parts, operated by a system of pulleys and levers by willing volunteers. So the sea monster can move it’s head side to side and up and down, it can blink, blow steam and move it’s tail. The sailing boat rocks in a realistic fashion, the sail fills with air and slackens, the sailors get blasted with sea spray.
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| The Ile de Nantes. |
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| An enormous yellow crane. Obviously! |
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| Jane is not having quite as much fun as the other guy - check HIM out. Wheeeeeeeeee! |
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| The workshop - all of the machines (apart from the elephant) are going to be made into an enormous carousel which will be absolutely huge. |
The centerpiece though is a larger than life elephant. People are carried within the belly and also on top of the elephant, which walks, lifting its legs in turn, move it’s head, blinks, flaps its ears and blows spray from it’s very maneuverable articulated trunk. Very, very cool.
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| The driver |
Nantes itself seems a fun town. It’s a bit more modern than other French towns we have stayed in and because it’s a student town it has a relaxed atmosphere. Unusually for France, we found lots of Asian food restaurants- yay! While we were there we also took in a few of the other sites- the Cathedral, the Chateau des Ducs de Bretagne, the Lieu Unique and Passage Pommeraye.
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| Nantes cathedral |
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| Chateau des Ducs de Bretagne |
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| Moats and grounds around the Chateau |
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| Lieu Unique |
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| Me accidentally ordering whisky flavoured beer! Tasted nothing like whiskey, or any flavour a human would normally consume. Morgan kindly helped me out with this one. |
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| Passage Pommeraye |
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