La Rochelle #19: Uni and des Petits Trucs [Little Thingy-ma-bobs]

BIKE RIDING TODAY, went to see uni buildings.

God I've missed biking. I'm not badarse enough to bike in Wellington with all the hills and the intermittent bike lanes, but they've got it sorted up here :D


So there's this thing called Yélo (which is clever, because the bikes are yellow, and French for bike is vélo) - I guess you'd call it part of the public transport system (the company also has taxis and some buses). There are station-things scattered around La Rochelle, and you pay to get a card and subscription thing, then can ride one and drop it off at another station elsewhere. But if you go to the one at the Office of Tourism (and return it there), you can ride it around for 2 hours free, the 1 euro for each following hour till 5.30pm!

My bike (with aforementioned Paris bag), at the corner of Albert Einstein road. I got a basket!

Anyway so went to check out the uni buildings (just the outside):

The Technoforum.
An admin-y type building, where the office for International students etc is.

Faculty of Law, about 10min south of the Technoforum.
There's a bike lane in the two roundabouts we took to get there; I need to figure out how they work :p

Faculty of Arts ('Lettres, Langues, Arts et Sciences Humaines' - FLLASH).
About 5 min north of Technoforum.

University Library! Just by FLLASH.

In other news, there are awesome castley-type towers around La Rochelle:

And some random things!

Epic doorknob on rue Sardinerie.

ONE OF THE MANY CHOCOLATE SHOPS.

THE REST OF THE DISPLAY WINDOW. OM NOM.

A TOWER OF MACAROONS.
Chocolate, coffee, vanilla, strawberry, lemon, pistachio...
I don't know what the purpley-ones are though.

TIFFY TIFFY TIFFY LOOK IT'S ICE CREAM AND CREPES.

DELICIOUS PROFITEROLES FOR DESSERT (at LUNCH).

The restaurant had a carousel for the glasses, bahaha.
Also there was a circular tower-like staircase up to the bathroom :D

Bought a ring -

- that is AWESOME.

Also Swiss Army knives are cheap here!

[Spoiler alert from 2013: I lost the Swiss Army knife to an Australian airport when returning to NZ after my token Christmas/New Year's trip to the Philippines in 2012-13, and lost the ring somewhere in Wellington, I suspect late 2012. So that sucks.]