Oh my, was this ever a crazy day. Around noon, we walked several blocks from the Boudeaus with our small bags packed and on our backs to catch the Nantes tram, Line 1. That worked as planned, other than our bags were a bit heavy for the walk. Arriving at the tram stop, we went to buy our tram tickets but had difficulty with the machine. It didn’t accept several of our coins. Fortunately, we had enough extra to get the tickets and were soon on our way to the Nantes train station.

Inside the station, we studied how to take the train to Pornichet and pretty much figured it out without a hitch. But once the train arrived, we had a difficult time finding the correct car. We got on at “Voiture 15” and were looking for “Voiture 11.” So we traipsed through four train cars to get to the correct one, only to find that our seats were taken! In fact, the family sitting there explained (in French) that these seats were theirs and nothing I could say, in French or otherwise, even showing them our ticket, got them to move. So we ended up standing between cars all the way to the next stop where they got off, taking some 30 minutes of our 50 minute train ride. At long last we took our seats.

Arriving at Pornichet, we needed to take a taxi to our hotel. I asked the one taxi driver at the train station to take us, but he had already committed to another fare and explained that his was the only available taxi. We called our hotel and were given the number for the taxi service, making arrangements to be picked up in 35 minutes (today’s photo is of Melinda and the girls waiting for the taxi in Pornichet). We then watched the original taxi driver come back twice to pick up others, apologizing profusely to us each time and ultimately explaining that our driver was due shortly. She arrived on time and, it seems, in the same car the original driver had been driving. 10 minutes and 15 Euros later we were at our hotel.

We checked in and then frustratingly waited another hour for our room to be available, finally getting our keys at about 5:30. I won’t go into the funny stories of trying to get our keys to work, the sliding glass door, or our grocery store experience. It’s 10:30 as I write, our hotel townhouse space is excellent and we had a delicious dinner on our balcony. So all’s well that ends well, yes?