Last day before we head home.

Cathy has been diligently attending the conference gathering useful data and making global people contacts for her ongoing advocacy work on making Saskatoon a more livable city by volunteering about 70 hours a week on various projects.

Meanwhile I have been doing the important work of wandering Nantes with my camera.

I spent many hours in Les Jardin des plantes de Nantes, a famous garden in the centre of Nantes populated by plants from all over the world. In 1726 Louis 15th ordered all ship’s captains to bring back to France seeds from the colonies and foreign lands. They obliged and this amazing garden was created.

 

Being somewhat of an expert on frequenting les toilettes I can report that virtually every facility in all the countries we visited was considerably cleaner than a toilet in almost any prairie town.  They may not all smell like Chanel N°5 but the French in particular add this colorful touch to the toilet paper.

Many of you will be surprised to see a bus load of bird pictures coming up I’m sure.

This Eurasian Wren was singing up a storm just above my head. Wren's have a pretty large presence for such a small bird.

Click here for a YouTube Video

The waterfowl are unusually tame and afford many chances for close ups. Many of the ducks and geese sport a wrist band visible in some pictures. These birds are mostly new to me and could even be hybrids so looking up descriptions may not have yielded accurate results. 

Note leg band on this Bar-headed goose.

Eurasian Teal.

Mandarin Ducks (Male)

Barnacle goose.

Red-crested Pochard.

Only this ones mother knows for sure who it is.

Tufted duck.

Northern Pintail (same as on the prairies)

Unknown goose.

For anyone interested you can see more pictures of this garden by clicking here:

Goodbye and thanks for following along.

Trent

Day 29

The European Cycling Federation meeting has started. This was the initial reason for the whole trip as Cathy attended this meeting in Vancouver three years ago and planned then to come to Nantes.

Decorations in the conference hall.

 

We both took part in a bicycle parade around Nantes on Wednesday evening.  Police mounted on horses started us out as a long line of cycles snaked along, alternately starting and stopping for no apparent reason. Today Cathy found out there were 7000 participants in the parade as the whole community had been invited to join in.

Day 28 Exploring EuroVelo 6

I rolled out of bed and began my job as hunter/gatherer. The search culminated in a superb catch as seen in the following pictures. If you can guess the contents of the paper bag you win a big fat French Croissant and a Pain au chocolat. When in France you must oblige and consume a daily fat treat.

 

While on my hunting expedition I spotted this visual clue solving a lingering question about how furniture and large goods are moved into apartments accessed via cramped, narrow twisted stairways.

With our map and bikes in tow we headed out to find the EuroVelo 6, a trail mapped, marked and maintained taking adventurous cyclists from Nantes to Budapest. Some years ago we had ridden a portion of this trail and wanted to see the origin here in Nantes. On the way we encountered an area of Nantes suffused with large-scale art projects intended to engage the viewer in an active manner. It seems much of Nantes was closed on a Monday morning so this mobile elephant was being maintained and not moving people around this park.

A restaurant created with a theme of triangular painted plywood panels and chairs seemed to pop out of the walkway. We could imagine such a feature prominently displayed along the Saskatchewan River in Saskatoon.

 We cycled for a 6 hours round trip exploration featuring city streets, public pathways, bubbling streams, forest rich with bird song, ancient stone walls and ended with a coffee shop overlooking Nantes.