Bretignolles-sur-Mer

Okay. It is hot here, too... But it's kind of cool to see this side of the Atlantic. 

We arrived at our hotel to find that we are in a funny kind of suite; there is a downstairs with a bathroom and then the bedroom is upstairs. Neither room had the air conditioning on when we got here, but lemme tell you how we cranked those down... 

One the way here, we had two important stops to make. One was for lunch. We found this place that sounded good, and so following our GPS, we took the following route:

This is because the restaurant is in the wrong place on GPS. It's actually just off of the road that we came in on. 

Afterwards, we went to the Le Musee Du Chocolat in La Roche-sur-Yon. The guys there do a lot of chocolate carving. 

The workshop uses older machines to produce the chocolate from the raw cacao beans. It's a cool process. Of course, we had to test the products to ensure their quality. 

They passed the test. 

Last night, we drove down to Les Sables-d'Olonne so that Dan could start getting his seafood fix. 

We were seated right in front of the window where the dudes were preparing the fresh seafood. It was hot as it could be (no AC), but at least we were entertained. Below, you can see the big ole fish that this guy cut in half. 

I had a sea bream cooked in a banana leaf, accompanied by a coconut milk sauce. The whole fish, with a green curry inside (could be misinterpreted as innards, TBH) was on the plate, in the leaf, and the sauce was on the side. Like the dumbass that I am, I had no idea how to eat it, so I had to ask the server. She said to get a bite of fish and dunk it. So dunk I did. It was delicious and definitely not something that we would make at home. We were on the lookout for ice cream on the way home, but amazingly, there were no ice cream shops open at 9:30 PM. These beach towns are missing out on some serious action. 

This morning, Dan went out on his early morning discovery trek. After he left to find fresh prawns to take back tomorrow and to go to the Museum of Miniatures, which I'm sure will be fascinating, I walked the beach a little. It was already 90 degrees at 10 AM, but the waters of the Atlantic were chilly and there was a nice breeze. Still hot, though...

I don't know what else we will do today, but it will involve air conditioning.