Lorient, Port-Louis, and Concarneau, 15-18 october 2019

This is about three places all related to the ocean.
There is an area in Lorient called La Base, which I don’t fully understand, though it is clearly all connected with the sea. It has lots of apparent warehouses, some commercial activity, including businesses that sell products for serious sailors, and it also has some museums, two of which we visited. The location was very important during WWII, because it was a complex of German submarine pens, with 15-foot deep concrete walls to protect the boats in docks and drydocks. Today it’s a bit rusty and overgrown, but the original purpose is still clear:

We like submarine movies, so we wanted to go aboard the Flore, which was active during the Cold War. Unlike the Pampanito (a WWII sub on the Embarcadero), the Flore is out of the water:

And although it is probably more spacious than the Pampanito, the accommodations were very tight for its crew of about 40 men:

In addition to the sub and its accompanying exhibits, we went to a big museum completely dedicated to sailing, especially racing. (The video about wingsails had recognizable footage of the America’s Cup in SF.) I didn’t get any good photos inside, but we saw some racing boats outside in the water, leading to . . .

a trip on another day to Port-Louis, across the water from Lorient. It has a terrific citadel fortress on a terrifically windy point just south of Lorient’s harbor. From the battlements, we saw a boat coming in from afar (and if you zoom in you might see the incredibly fast windsurfers out there):

And as it got closer, it was clearly a trimaran, with a cabin in the center hull. Please look closely to get a sense of the huge size of this boat:

We wondered where it might be going in the harbor, and we were pleased to see that it appeared to dock over at La Base, where we had been earlier. Here are the submarine pens from across the water:

Here’s more of the Port-Louis citadel, very much right on the coast:

I really wanted to get a sense of the coast in Brittany, and it has happened. The last place I’ll show you is a town northwest of Lorient called Concarneau. It was windy when we arrived at its well-preserved old part of town, which includes a small enclosed fortified village. Today, it’s definitely a tourist attraction, so being here in October is probably good:

The village inside the walls is a bit cute, but not oppressively so:

and I added to my collection of interesting shop signs:

A few blocks away from the fortifications we found the Marinarium, a museum and marine research station. Though pretty small in comparison to some aquariums we love, this was fascinating. I feel very fortunate to have snapped this truly blue little lobster:

Finally, the large Friday market had wrapped up by the time we left, and with all the trucks and stands removed, workers were cleaning up the square. We liked the hefto vacuum cleaner: