Nantes; Sunday, 23 February, 2025

Given the early start the previous morning I had a bit of a lie-in and a late breakfast before leaving my bag with the hotel reception and heading out into town to take the bus up the hill out of the city centre to the second basilica of the city, the Basilique Saint-Donatien et Saint-Rogatien. Mass was still going on at the basilica when I arrived so I just took in the views of the building from the outside before walking back down the hill in towards town stopping off at the banks of the Erdre river which from this point is diverted into a tunnel underneath the city behind the cathedral and chateau before it empties into the Loire.

Just a little upstream is the small Île de Versailles, which I crossed over to via the very narrow and tall foot bridge. It turns out that the island is a pretty large Japanese Garden, so I spent quite a bit of time wander around the garden taking in the views before heading over to the nearby tram stop and taking the tram back into the centre of town.

After stopping for a quick lunch from a bakery I headed back over towards the chateau and to the southern end of the tunnel that the Erdre river emerges from, at this point there are excellent views back to both the chateau and the cathedral on the skyline so I took quite a few photos here before heading back to the tram stop and heading several stops to the west towards the site of the former port of Nantes.

Until the shipyards closed at the end of the 20th century the city of Nantes had been an important ship building and trading port, but that also included being involved historically in the trade of humans. At one point Nantes was the most important port in France for the transatlantic slave trade with at least half a million victims transited through the city on their way from West Africa to the slave colonies of the West Indies and America.

In recognition of it’s role in the trade a memorial has been established on the banks of the Loire, close to where many of the slaver ships would have docked, that tells the shameful story of the slave trade, and the history of its abolition over nearly 200 years.

Across the river from the memorial is the Île de Nantes, once home to shipbuilding and industry in the city, but since the turn of the millennium is being slowly redeveloped, with one of the city’s main tourist attractions based here – Les Machines de l'Île.

The site is formed of several linked attractions, the Carrousel of the Marine Worlds, a carrousel made up of three levels with different sea creatures that you can ride on or in. The Galerie des Machines which houses a number of mechanical animals from a giant spider to a heron via a chameleon and sloth, several of which are large enough for humans to ride on, and perhaps the most impressive of all Le Grand Éléphant a 45 ton wood and steel elephant which goes for walk around the site with room for up to 50 passengers.

I spent much of the afternoon at the site, having booked online in advance on Friday evening at which point there had only been a couple of spaces left, meaning that I’d had to break up the afternoon a bit with gaps between attractions, but this actually worked out to be for the best as it gave me time to explore the whole of the site.

My first stop was the Carrousel where I had an explore around all three levels before taking my turn to have a ride, in my case on a smoke blowing manta ray, before wandering through the site over to the Gallery for the 16:20 session where guides take you through all of the different mechanical exhibits which left me a little bit of time to explore before the highlight of the afternoon by 18:00 elephant ride. During the main part of the day the elephant walks backwards and forwards between the carrousel and an area behind the gallery of machines, but as this was the last walk of the night the elephant is walked from the gallery boarding point round the back of the site and into the main hall of the former shipyards so that you end with the elephant next to the gallery of machines.

By the time my elephant ride finished it was gone 18:30 so I quickly made my way back to the hotel to pick up my bag and then head over to the airport, arriving at 20:00 two hours before the scheduled departure time of my flight, which turned out to be a bit too early as the flight was nearly 40 minutes late, and as it was the last departure of the evening, there was nothing open inside the terminal so I just spent nearly two hours sat in the departures lounge before we finally boarded for the flight back to London.