A Day in Nantes

Today I went to Nantes with my host mom and host sister. Nantes is a pretty big city – about the same as San Francisco, population-wise. To my host family, it's a Really Big City, because we live in Bois de Céné, population 1,602, smaller than Homestead High School. We go to school and do errands in the “city” of Challans, population 18 thousand, or about an eighth the size of Sunnyvale. It took us only half an hour to get to Nantes because there was almost no traffic. Then we hit the stores.

French people are so classy and dress so well – I keep wondering why no one has cornered the market on importing French styles to the US with a store named “La Mode Parisienne” or something like that, and all the labels marked in French. People would think it was so classy. I really feel like it would be a successful women's fashion store. Why is that not a thing? It might have something to do with the fact that all French fashions are trying to imitate the US. We went to H&M (it's pronounced “osh ey emme,” not “aych and emme”), which is hugely successful here because it's American. [CORRECTION: It's Swedish, and I should look these things up before posting them. Thanks May!] The other stores we went to were French, but sold plenty of shirts with badly-worded English on them (“Hello, Welcome to the paradise with me...” What?).

I guess French people don't realize they're cool, because they're so concerned with how cool America is. The funny thing is that they think America is super fashionable, when a lot of things that I would've worn at home couldn't be worn here. T-shirts (the non-fitted kind) can't be worn to a French high school, because it's not fashionable enough. I'm glad I didn't bring my massive stack of band shirts. Flannel button-downs are my staple in the winter, but those too are a little too shabby for France. Ditto for sweatpants and sweatshirts. So it's almost like they think they're importing American fashions, but they aren't really. They have French fashions that they stick American labels on.

Anyway, I loved the stores and found them quite classy and French, even if the labels were American. I stocked up on warm clothes because I seriously underestimated how cold it would be here. It's been hovering around 45 degrees F during the middle of the day, and feels colder because of the wind. And if I squinted hard and pretended that the € sign on the price tags was actually in dollars, it wasn't even too expensive!

Having an American credit card is a fiasco. There isn't really any other option, because you have to be French or over 18 and living here permanently to get one of their cards. They have a credit card that you stick in a slot instead of swiping. While it's in the card reader, you type in a four-digit code to prove your identity. My host family was quite astonished when I explained to them that no, we don't verify our credit cards. If someone steals it, you just have to cancel your credit card before they buy a yacht. So every time I buy something, I have to explain that it's an American credit card. Then I swipe it, and we have to wait for a while while the cashier figures out how to deal with it. The first store I was at just asked for a signature. The second asked for a signature and ID – fine, I have a CA driver's license, and some stores in the US also ask for IDs, though it isn't particularly common, especially if you're only buying one 20€ item. The third store I was at spent about 20 minutes figuring out how to deal with it at the cashier, and then asked for a signature. I scrawled a JM – my initials – which is what I normally do when asked to sign things that aren't terribly important. The manager (the cashier had long since given up and called for the manager) looked at my signature, compared it to the one on my credit card, and said “It's not at all the same, so can I have your ID please?” I was astonished. I've never seen anyone actually look at a signature before. But I gave her my ID and she proceeded to write down every piece of information on it – that it was a CA driver's license, the number, my full name, when it was issued, and when it expires. I almost protested on suspicion of identity theft, but decided she was just being careful because she's not used to dealing with American credit cards. Understandable. But still, weird. So in conclusion, in big stores like H&M, it almost always works in the end, but it takes patience. In little stores, don't even try. Pay in cash.

So after a nice day of shopping, we went to McDonald's for lunch. Let's get this straight – I hate McDonald's. 7 years ago I threw up Chicken McNuggets all over the floor of a bus in Washington D.C., which completely ruined my trip to the capital and I have kept a grudge against McD's ever since. I eat there exactly once a year, on the bus ride home from camp, because we have no choice. Usually I order a smoothie, preferring to listen to my stomach rumble all the way home than to suffer through a cheeseburger or some other equally greasy, unappetizing, reconstituted cow brain.

French McDonald's is completely different. I figured it would be, which is why I didn't object to going there. Here is a picture of my “McBaguette” :

The portions are small and expensive, as opposed to large and cheap in the States. The McBaguette is pretty much like a Subway, but with fewer vegetables. Here I opened it up so you can see the interior, which is meat (actual meat, not reconstituted cow brain, since French alimentation is highly regulated), lettuce, and delicious spicy mustard sauce.

So if you're ever in France and don't know where to go to eat, the “MacDo” isn't a bad option.

Nantes itself is like any other big city – an older San Francisco, or a small New York. There are a couple special Old World things about it, like the Château des ducs de Bretagne which is this massive old castle in the middle of the city. French people are very casual about the old historical buildings around them. To me it's bizarre to drive past a mall, an apartment building, and then * PAF * a frigging Hogwartz, but my host mom is just like “oh, hey, look, there's the château,” and my host sister just rolls her eyes and says “YES, Mom, we know, we can see it.” Teehee.

← The castle up close

The castle from above

 In exactly one week I will be in Paris for three days! So if any of you have recommendations for cool things to do in Paris, go ahead and comment below.