And Then There Was One. . .

Bri, Yvanne and Annie-dinner at Annie's house

Bri and I having lunch in park near study abroad center

"IES" center, study abroad, very old building

Loire Valley Chateau Linda and I visited as will Bri with her group

Old floor of study abroad headquarters in Nantes

Linda and I successfully navigated into the large city of Nantes with horrendous traffic! We found the train station and even though it was a couple of hours before Linda had to catch her train back to Charles de Gaulle airport, we parked there. Ate a bad lunch near the station from food servers who had at least 3 food handler's violations. There are definitely times when I miss the U.S! Time went by quickly and Linda and I needed to get back to the train station with her luggage to figure out the train track assigned to her train. We mistakenly thought that the screen would indicate CDG airport as a destination. Fortunately, a kindly fellow at the cafeteria at the station knew what train Linda needed with a destination of "Lille" or something like that and we just needed to quickly find the correct track once it came up on the screen. We boarded the train, finding Linda's seat and getting her luggage stowed. We said a tearful goodbye. Unbeknownst to us, a train engineer in France had been stabbed by a crazy person the day before, so many of the train operators were on strike! There was no one to run Linda's train. There was some talk that the train wouldn't leave at all but fortunately it did leave 45 minutes late. Linda spent the night at the Ibis hotel at the airport and flew home Saturday morning. Meantime, oblivious to Linda's plight, I went back to the car, studied the Nantes map trying to locate the parking garage I was to park while a guest at the city hotel. I could not locate it in the maze of curvy streets so I started out for the center of town in my tiny car. Some of Nantes has pedestrian only streets, including the one my hotel for the next two nights was located. I drove around through heavy traffic where I would get the squeeze many times when little cars or motor bikes would cram themselves in ahead of me, or when the streets would  go from two to one lane seemingly randomly. Fun stuff! After 30 minutes of stressful driving and not finding any parking on the street or garages (which had up to date electronic signs indicating the number of spaces available, or not!) I headed back to the train station knowing that at least there was parking there. Fortunately for me, Bri soon texted me that she was done with her obligations for the day and was coming to meet me at the station. We sought some help locating the hotel parking lot and on foot walked there to check it out to plan our entry by car. Good thing we did, as it was very difficult to find! We moved the car to the lot and at last, we were checked into the hotel. We took the tram to Bri's host mom's house for her to collect her overnight things and went back to the city center to have Thai food for dinner. It gave me a lift to be back with my Bri! She had a bad sinus infection but had been seen earlier that day by a physician so was started on antibiotics but she was coughing like crazy. She was taking 1000 mg of Penicillin twice daily for 5 days. Last I knew, the usual U.S. dose is 1000 mg daily in 4 divided doses. Whatever, she was being treated and that was good.

We walked around Nantes the next day, meeting a couple more friends in the study abroad program, seeing the program's offices and having a baguette sandwich in the nearby tree lined park. We had a nap together and then took the tram to the home of Brianna's host mom Annie, for dinner. Annie's 20+ year old daughter was visiting from Strasbourg for the weekend. It was a fun evening and Annie had clearly gone to a lot of trouble to make a nice dinner including some algae appetizer and calamari with tomato sauce for the main course, a cheese course and an apple tart for dessert. Annie doesn't speak English but her daughter is fluent. Annie is quite a character and becomes very animated when excited about a topic and likes to laugh. The house is small with Bri's room being on the ground floor. Her bedroom has a sink and a shower with the toilet at the other end of the house by the kitchen.

Sunday, I dropped Bri back at Annie's and left at noon for the village of La Londe where I will stay at a B+B while taking a Seafood cooking class in the small town of Louviers in Normandy. Still no GPS on my car and I need to be at a welcome dinner On Rue Tatin at 7:30.  I left for a drive that should have taken 4 hours but this day, it took 6.5 hours. And no, it wasn't because of bad traffic. . . .