Well 6 days in La Rochelle and what can we say, its been ace...... great bars ..the closet one to the boat is called Bar Leffe...guess what that sells! we have been able to watch England lose again on penalties whilst eating pizza and drinking some ace beer and wine, we have managed to catch up on boat jobs and still found time to visit the beautiful and interesting Ille De Re where we had a great celebrity snub, we spotted and ignored Jenny Eclair in a restaurant ....Ed will understand this. We even had a fly past from the french red arrows smoke and all(.....wasnt as good as regatta week!!!)

There have been slight annoyances, the toilet facilites are 1/2 mile away and quite frankly ....french style, (see earlier post). There are some mexican pikees who have set up pan pipe busking on the quay and .... this wouldnt be so bad if their entire set wasn't the theme from last of mohicans, we are sailing(Rod Stuart), and el condo paso repeated at infinitum from 6pm till 1am. We had a music festival here on solstice which was fun, every street corner had a PA and artisits of some description. There was hip hop, trance, rock and even jazz in different locations. Unfortunately the closest location to us had rock bands on, all of which did endless RHCP cover versions...badly. Still we had occasional YOH'S from the hip hop stage across the harbour to break it up. It also ensured the citys great unwashed population increased dramatically. Never apart from my Brighton days have I seen so many dogs on bits of string. But they all look so healthy (the dogs that is) we figure there must be a "rent a crusty chien emporium" somewhere where they pick them up in the morning, go begging drop them off at night while they down their takings in special brewin the park at the end of the harbour and the dogs get fed washed, ready to go for the next day. My best crusty spot this week was a crusty street juggler, complete with dreadlocks and dog etc who clearly couldnt juggle!!!! dropped his pins infront of tourists before looking up hand outstreatched asking for money. 10/10 for trying the sympathy vote!
Last night was quiet being sunday night untill 2 french couples on the boat in front decided to have an impromptue drunken party/argument at 2am this morning. We couldnt be bothered to get up but I had great fun jumping up and down on the pontoon at 9am this morning just outside their boat shouting good morning wakey wakey.....was that wrong?????
But we have loved it here,the locals cant do enough for you, really atmospheric place to stay and tomorrow Steve arrives and its off to Espana where we will be able to watch Spain Portugal!!!! Conditions in the Biscay are not ideal due to the bad weather about to hit England but we think safe and doable so we are thinking going for it!!!!