{"id":1927,"date":"2017-09-23T13:49:14","date_gmt":"2017-09-23T17:49:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thesauerbrunreport.com\/?p=1927"},"modified":"2017-09-23T13:49:14","modified_gmt":"2017-09-23T17:49:14","slug":"1927","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesauerbrunreport.com\/?p=1927","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"

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A beautiful sunny and 75 F during my first three days in Nantes. Gorgeous. I\u2019m staying at an \u201capart-hotel\u201d in the middle of what seems like a nice, quiet neighborhood. It\u2019s a big room with a kitchen and no housekeeping \u2013 and no overnight front desk presence \u2013 so you punch a code in to enter after regular business hours.<\/p>\n

I can\u2019t remember why I planned it this way (probably because of cost) but it\u2019s turned out to be a perfect situation. Because Nantes \u2013 like all of France I guess \u2013 is teeming with incredible near-daily markets \u2013 so I\u2019ve been able to eat-in after picking up some great groceries nearby.<\/p>\n

Again, it was pure luck \u2013 but the place I\u2019m staying is just down the street from Talensac Market \u2013 considered the city\u2019s best. On Saturday morning, there were probably twenty vendors selling produce \u2013 and at least ten butchers, ten fish-sellers, 15 bakers and 15 cheese makers. I\u2019ve never seen a market like it. There were long, long lines at several of the popular places. I guess the key difference I noticed here compared to American greenmarkets is that here you don\u2019t touch the produce. You don\u2019t collect what you want \u2013 and then pay for it. You wait in line \u2013 tell the seller what you want \u2013 and then the seller scoops it up with varying levels of deference to the customer\u2019s input before weighing it. There are no plastic bags \u2013 or very few. You don\u2019t really see them. Everybody has the reusable sack for any and all food-related purchases. I came armed with several on this trip. I wish NYC would get with the program on plastic bags but that\u2019s a gripe for another day.<\/p>\n

Everything food is cheaper or the same in France compared to the US except maybe lobster. I saw the most beautiful dark, red-hued, just-caught tuna in Nantes this morning and all the fish-sellers had it at about 25 or 26 euros per kilo. The same Atlantic Ocean I live near is just 60 kilometers due west from Nantes.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s one guy (along with someone who might be his wife) selling nothing but a bunch of varieties of raw, cured fish. I\u2019m gonna try to find him tomorrow.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve had a somewhat debilitating head cold going on 72 hours. I\u2019m playing a game now which consists of straddling between taking it easy to gain full recovery \u2013 and marching full speed because I don\u2019t want to waste my time here.<\/p>\n

Yesterday, I went about fifteen minutes north of where I\u2019m staying to see a full twilight card of horse racing at Hippodrome du Petit Port. The eight race program featured five \u201cflat\u201d races \u2013 or thoroughbred entries running on a grass oval of sorts \u2013 and three \u201chaies\u201d races \u2013 where the contestants must jump hurdles spaced out widely over a long distance run. Admission was 5 euros \u2013 and they handed you a free program on the way in.<\/p>\n

Small, roughly nine-ounce pours of \u201c1664\u201d \u2013 the Bud equivalent in France \u2013 cost 2.5 euros. I had a sausage on a fresh baguette for 4 euros. The crowd swelled as the day went on \u2013 and the atmosphere wasn\u2019t bad. This was racing at a significantly lower level than what I saw at St. Cloud a year ago but it was a well-organized event from the race caller to the people doing identity checks after entries were saddled to the guys replacing divots on the turf course \u2013 all the way up and down. It was a well-organized day. Most impressive to witness was the effort of several track workers forced to corral a runaway horse after the seventh race using only a white towel and a variety of soothing but forceful French phrases.<\/p>\n

I did not place a bet because the past performance information didn\u2019t allow me to make the kind of educated guesses I\u2019m accustomed to at home. This hasn\u2019t stopped me before of course \u2013 but I didn\u2019t really feed the need to bet.<\/p>\n

The third race on the card \u2013 the Prix Mellinet \u2013 was an 8-10 thousand euro claiming race for all horses four and up. The interesting condition here \u2013 one I\u2019ve never seen before in the states for a regular race \u2013 is that all entries had to have a female jockey.
\nI\u2019ll get more into a description of Nantes in a couple days. I really like what I see so far. It\u2019s visually stimulating for sure. It\u2019s quirky and different than the other French cities I\u2019ve been to. But it\u2019s totally French. There\u2019s no tourists really that I can see other than a few here for a tech convention and an electronic music gathering.<\/p>\n

I got on a bicycle a couple times today. The extensive Nantes bike share system costs just one euro for one day\u2019s worth of all the 30-minute rides you want during a 24-hour period.<\/p>\n

Usually leery of mingling with vehicular traffic, I\u2019m more comfortable riding here than most places because of the nicely-planned, well-marked lanes for bikes only. There\u2019s also many stretches in well-traveled, popular parts of the city protected from cars via sidewalk-like bikeways rarely seen in most urban areas given the fight for space.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A beautiful sunny and 75 F during my first three days in Nantes. Gorgeous. I\u2019m staying at an \u201capart-hotel\u201d in the middle of what seems like a nice, quiet neighborhood. It\u2019s a big room with a kitchen and no housekeeping … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/s28tEv-1927","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesauerbrunreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1927"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesauerbrunreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesauerbrunreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesauerbrunreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesauerbrunreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1927"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thesauerbrunreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1927\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1928,"href":"https:\/\/thesauerbrunreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1927\/revisions\/1928"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesauerbrunreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1927"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesauerbrunreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1927"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesauerbrunreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1927"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}