La Rochelle: getting lost and getting back

As we wandered in our lostness, the nature of our tour became much more, shall we say, impressionistic. If something caught my eye, I photographed it, so that's what follows: a series of impressions. We begin with a blue door whose blueness reminded me of all those blue shutters out in the nearby French towns:

Even Dominique stopped to take a closer look at this image:

Another set of blue doors:

A loooooong shot down a typical side street in La Rochelle:

I deliberately framed this shot so you couldn't see the street just off to the left. By doing so, I create the impression of a cloistered walk, I think:

I saw the following written on a wooden door and thought I'd have to have a heart of stone not to be moved by something so romantic. Je t'aime plus que tout au monde means, "I love you more than everything in the world":

Another cloistered-but-not-really-cloistered shot, which reminded me a bit of being in Berne, Switzerland, where many such covered sidewalks exist along the Swiss capital's main drag:

No idea what this is, but it looked historical, so I took a pic:

We ended up wandering into a flock of flamingo-like umbrellas:

The street opened up into a square, typical of many squares in European cities. This square had a farmer's market in it, buzzing with activity (and protected by hovering 'brella-angels):

Oysters! Note how some are sold by the dozen while others are sold by the kilo:

Way up ahead was a house done in colombage style; Dominique noticed it first and pointed it out to me because it vaguely reminded him of the architecture one would find in his former region of Alsace, next door to Germany and Switzerland, where such architecture is common (imagine pretty much any ski chalet, and you're probably thinking of colombage-style architecture). Two major differences, though, were that (1) this colombage was off-white whereas the classic colombage is bright white, and (2) this colombage used a different style of wooden post for the framing.

Final shot for La Rochelle before we got un-lost. I took this pic because Dominique pointed upward and said, "Look at that façade!" Otherwise, I would've shrugged and moved on.

Having now un-lost ourselves, we were on our way back to the water. The next picture is, in my opinion, a bit ugly. I almost didn't include it here; the electric wiring seems tacky, out of place, and not very inspiring. I imagine it's much more meaningful at night, with the lights on:

This funky bit of architecture was reminiscent of the above-mentioned colombage style, but note that the black, crisscrossing elements aren't pieces of timber:

...and that's all from La Rochelle. The day was cloudy, cool, and a bit gloomy, but my tour of the city was nevertheless illuminating. There was way too much information to take in; I could spend weeks trying to sort through it all, but I've never been much of a history buff, so I'll leave that task to better minds than mine.