Hot in Nantes

Nantes is a very cool city for kids, and for people who like what kids like. Even if, in the 24 hours we were there, the actual temperature reached 39C. Four fun things we came across; I am sure there are more:

The amazing huge mechanical elephant on the île des Machines. Much more fun than to ride it is to watch it walk about and avoid or enjoy the water it sprays around.

A curved football pitch that appears rectangular only in the curved mirror. Not sure if anyone actually plays football here or how it works out if they do.

The street fountain with ever-changing patterns of spray.


A massively long shiny slide…. down the side of the 15th C chateau.

Nantes is also a serious place. The excellent Musee d’Histoire de Nantes http://www.chateaunantes.fr/fr/evenement/musee-dhistoire-de-nantes has, among many other things, a focus on the development of trade and industry and as part of this, the slave trade. Nantes was the leading French city involved in slavery and France second only to England in the scale of involvement from Europe (buying and shipping slaves from Africa to the US and the British and French colonised Caribbean). The museum is notable in acknowledging the role of Nantes and together with the separate memorial in the centre of the city, is clear about the need not to forget but to make efforts to face the wrongs done, head-on.

Nantes seems to me to have much history and other things in common with Bristol and is a place to come back to.