The market, LaBaule, an afternoon with friends, LeClairc, and other random pictures

On Sunday, we went to a lovely open-air market.

 

Here is my sister, Marianne, proudly wearing our shopping bag.

 

We stopped by the meat stand where there was sausage after sausage after sausage.

The samples were delicious, but the proprietors did not appreciated our snacking on them, so they shoed us away.

 

I also loved how they had this lovely picture of livestock, just to remind you where all that yummy sausage came from.

 

This picture doesn't accurately show it, but it was amazing just how much fresh produce there was!

 

We stopped by a scarf stand and Marc found one that suited him well.

 

For the market, they hung lovely banners across the street.  You can't see it incredibly well here, but they're there nonetheless.

 

On the way home, we found this lovely mini-castle.  It was right in front of the sea and just about the most gorgeous little house ever!

 

Right next to the castle was a nice little boat launch with a lovely view of the coast.

 

Marc and Marianne coerced me into taking pictures with them.

 

Later that afternoon, we went to LaBaule, which is basically the Georgetown of Saint-Nazaire.  That's the main avenue.

 

There was a pretty church there and a random grumpy man too!

 

These are super gigantic blocks of soap that you could rub to figure out your favorite scent.  (The mango one was the best.)

 

As we walked down the main avenue, I just loved the different architecture, so I snapped a picture of one of the houses.

 

In one of the shops we found a bunch of piggy-banks with funny sayings on them.  My favorite was a pig holding a hammer with the caption: "Break in case of emergency."

 

Another pretty house we found.

This is a picture of the post office in LaBaule.  Yes, I really did take a pisture of the post office.  It's just so much prettier then in the USA.  And yes, the French people laughed at me too.

 

A gigantic chateau transformed into an upscale hotel.

 

 

Yesterday, I went out with my two good friends, Constance and Manon.

 

They took me to see one of the light houses that's on a long fishing platform that jets out into the sea.

 

There's not much of a point of refernce, but the lighthouses were really small.  Maybe only two stories tall.  They were rather cute.

 

We also found a Hello Kitty boat.  It made me laugh.

 

This is a modern art exhibit that's pretty awesome.  You have to go on the roof of a builging to see it and it's mostly on the roof of the building opposite, but parts of it jut out on to other buildings.  The cool part is that the other buildings aren't near at all, and so you walk through the town and see random red stripes on buildings and only when you go on top of the one building does it make sense why there are all these red stripes.

 

This is the inside of a German base that the Nazis built.  These bases are so strong that it's impossible to demolish them without destroying the town too, so they've been repurposed into different things.

 

This one held a recording studio and I think a dancing parlor (or something like that).  There's actually one at my school and we use it for our drama classroom.  It's just neat to see how history is part of every day life here.

 

Next, we stopped by the town mall where they have an incredibly bizzare sculpture, just because.

 

That's the mall and my friend Manon in the corner.

 

 

These were the trash cans in the mall.  Apparently, lots of kids have no clue that they're trash cans, so they stick their heads in and find out the hard way.

 

 

We stopped by H&M and I tried on a beret.  We also found shoes that weren't attached in pairs and there were multiple colors.  Being myself, I of course wanted to know if you could buy one shoe in one color and the other in another color.  We asked the sales lady and she told us no as if we were nuts, and all the other customers laughed.  It was quite funny.

 

Our last stop was the candy store!  And this was only one wall....  I'll be visiting again soon.  :)

 

Today, we stopped by LeClairc, which is basically France's Wal-Mart.

 

The fish were all just there, dead and lined up one after the other.  A little bit different than at home.  And there were so many of them too!  This is just a small bit of the fish section.

 

I ddin't take a picture of it, but they also had an entire aisle (both sides) devoted to yogurt.  And this wasn't a tiny European aisle, it was an American-sized aisle.  These French people know how to do food.  And the cheese section?  Ginormous!

 

And, of course, how could I not photograph the cakes?

 

They were all so pretty and yummy looking.

 

And I took even more photos than these three!

 

After the cash registers, they had little shops, almost like a mini-mall.  Just a different way of doing things.

 

Over the weekend we also found this incredibly adorable getaway car for a just-married couple.  The photo doesn't do its cuteness justice.

 

And, this is the view from my window.  You see in between those two houses?  That's the sea!!!!!

 

And that's all.  Tune in next time to hear about the historical performance I'm going to be seeing this weekend!