Iles des Machine in Nantes

November 3^rd, 2025 

Today’s adventure would start with checking out Les Machines de L’Ile (Machines of the Island) in Nantes, a city of about 350,000 people.  This would be the biggest city that I would be driving Octi into and it turned out to be totally stress free.  It helped that it was Saturday morning, and my plan was to do a Park and Ride from a tram metro station as there was a lot of road construction on bridges over to the central island where this exhibition was located.  Not only was it stress free, but it was also monetarily free…the parking was free and rides on the metro is free on the weekends.  Nice Nantes!

An artsy building in the nearby neighborhood.  That's a grey/black bus on the bottom right above the colourful bit.

From checking out the website for this artistic, touristic and cultural project, there were a few activities one could do.  The one that stuck out right away was this massive 12-metre-tall mechanical elephant that you could ride on (never ride a real elephant folks, it’s not good for them…although I did ride one in Nepal back in 2007 before I knew better).  I was tempted to buy a ticket for this one-of-a-kind activity but then read some reviews that stated it was better to just check it out from the ground as it was quite slow and didn’t move far during the 30-minute ride…it was more something for little kids to enjoy.

 

I turned up just in time to catch the elephant out on a stroll in the exhibition grounds by the river.  It was impressive indeed…but I had made the right decision about not buying a ticket to ride on it as it moved at a super slow walking pace.

My first view of the "Grand Elephant"!

It was pretty awesome how he walked around...but I'm glad I didn't bother buying a ticket for the 30 minute ride on it, he was pretty slow.

Spraying water from his trunk...it wasn't warm enough outside to want to get wet.

An old destroyer, which is now a museum, on the riverfront...unfortunately I didn't have time to visit it.

Some old sailing ship...likely a floating museum too.

The main activity was the “Galerie des Machines”, an exhibition place with a myriad of strange machines, most of which were replicas of creatures in our natural world.  Even though I spoke in French, the lady who was checking my ticket that I had purchased online asked me if I would need things spoken in English…I guess my accent is pretty bad!  I told her I would likely be fine, a few things might get lost in translation, but I seemed to be the only Anglophone in the lineup.

The first of many exhibits in action...the chameleon.  A couple of young boys were working the eyes so they were all over the place.

Trying to catch his lunch, which was supposedly a rare miss.

The second attempt was successful.

A sloth.  Naturally, he was too slow to provide an interesting video.

Different staff members took turns putting on a headset with a microphone and explaining details about a specific exhibit to the group of about 80 tourists.  Occasionally they picked volunteers to help out with the demonstration, sometimes kids, sometimes adults and sometimes both.

A male bird (the colourful one of course), about to do his dance for the lady...

A big ant.

A strange plan trying to fly through a "storm".

A centipede.

This little girl, Mia, was super cute.

The robotic animals were amazing, but I couldn’t help but think about the amount of time, effort and expense that had gone into inventing these creations…crazy.

A giant spider.  I liked this one, but thought they could have had it stay on its eight legs a little longer.

A crazy flying bird...

This one was pretty cool.

The Palace of Justice by the riverfront.

These were interesting ping pong tables.  There are two on the left side that could have a person playing two games at once, at right angles to each other.

Taking the tram back to Octi, I left Nantes and headed south to the smaller city of La Rochelle, an ancient seaport.  My plan was to just wander around the old harbourfront area for an hour or so.

The driving and parking in La Rochelle turned out to be way more challenging than Nantes.  As I was getting closer to the densely packed old harbour with its narrow streets, I couldn’t help but notice that I saw at least three different young female drivers with an “A” sign on their rear windows.  I deduced that it designated a learner driver but had to look up later that it stands for “aprenti”, or apprentice driver.  One girl had what my granddad jokingly called “kangaroo petrol” as her car lurched back and forth numerous times.  Then another driver in front of me stalled her car three times in the span of five minutes.  No biggie, I remember those days.

The narrow streets did get confusing, and I felt the Google Maps almost sent me the wrong way but I eventually found the parking lot by the harbour.  I immediately noticed that I was by far the biggest vehicle in the lot.  Luckily, I found a three empty spots side by side and after a 6-point turn, I finally got Octi lined up in the middle spot.  He barely fit.  Boy, it’s going to be interesting when I get to cities like Porto!

It was a challenge to park Octi!

Look how many sailboat masts there are!

The old fortified entrance to the harbour.

Inside the harbour.

It was around 4 pm on a Saturday afternoon and the old city with its cobblestoned narrow streets was busy with locals and tourists alike.  It was a lovely, pedestrian traffic only area with shops, restaurants and bars.

A big old clock tower.

Entering the street through the tower.

Nice idea with the pink umbrellas...but there were a number of wrecked ones that needed to be replaced.

There were some lovely little streets.

Many people enjoying a drink and food on the harbourfront.

I wanted to reach the camp spot by a river near a small town that I had picked from my app before it got dark and just reached it at sunset so I didn’t stick around for too long.

It was a lovely place to camp, complete with a gorgeous sunset, although I didn’t really get to enjoy it as I was off again early in the morning.