Pink Saturday Goes to La Rochelle

 

The town hall of La Rochelle, France 

Before the year starts to run away and new adventures become the focus I want to do several posts about my adventures in France and England. There were a few places I returned to and a few that were totally new to me. One of the new places was La Rochelle, a port city on the Atlantic coast of France. Because La Rochelle is on the Atlantic coast it was a major port for hundreds of years, first to England, the Netherlands and Spain. Later it would become one of the major ports to the French colonies in the "New World." Its location saved days of sailing. 

Despite its present peaceful and beautiful appearance, La Rochelle has a complex and tragic history. It was a French Protestant city in a time of religious wars and its Protestant citizens didn't fare well. Many immigrated to the United States and the  town of New Rochelle, in Westchester County, New York was settled by residents of La Rochelle.  

The Old Harbor of La Rochelle

Though rain was predicted almost every day of our trip, on most days the forecast was incorrect and I'm especially glad that our day in La Rochelle was just about perfect. It was a holiday in France and we had lots of company to explore the historic streets. Betsy and I chose to skip an organized tour and we were prepared with brochures, maps and a lot of research that we had done before the trip. It all was worthwhile and it was a fascinating and very enjoyable day.

There are many seafood restaurants, but we were taken by the fun pillows. The food was great, too, and the waiter was very patient as I ordered in French. I did okay and we got exactly what we had wanted. It turned out that this was one of the restaurants that I highlighted in my research before the trip. 

After our lunch we shopped -- great stores in La Rochelle -- and then treated ourselves to a delicious dessert at tea time in one of the pastry shops. It was a much too quick visit, but so enjoyable and memorable. 

In the next post about the trip we'll be in England. One of the things I liked the best about this trip was seeing places that were totally new to me, some of which I had absolutely no awareness of before I left. One of them -- in our next post -- so won my heart that I'm hoping for a return trip one day. 

Happy to be back to my Pink Saturday posting. There are always fun and interesting posts there and definitely worth a visit. 

As ever, thanks for visiting and have a great last week of June.