City-life has us back for a short while!
We love city life and all it has to offer: good coffee (finally) as well as a young hipster vibe with its modern restaurants and bars.
Lorient does not qualify as a beautiful city by far, it is rather ugly. Nevertheless, it offered exactly the type of vibe we both have been craving for. Summer nights with music on the streets, groups of people parading down the small shopping streets and modern hip restaurants and bars everywhere.
There is a surf-sailing-university-like vibe all around the city, which simply did it for us. We have had plenty of beautiful villages the past weeks, however now, we fully engulfed ourselves in this raw city.
Lorient in theory has this rich history that all of the coastal towns in Brittany have to offer. It however has one of the darkest: The Second World War led to the almost total destruction of the town as Nazi Germany had chosen the town to build the largest submarine base ever. After its liberation, a long phase of reconstruction followed until the 1970s. You can still glimpse those huge beton blocks and structures all around the harbour that the Nazis built for their submarines and it leaves you with this eerie dark feeling all around. Nowadays however, it is the French hub of offshore sailing, offering a fascinating view on large vessels in all sorts of categories from the fastest trimaran to its famous Imoca fleet and class 40 racing yachts.
Upon entering the channel leading into Lorient, Lisa already had her first fangirl moments: a huge trimaran (world record fast) was returning from its training offshore as well as one of the Imoca fleet. We both have been cheering on Boris Herman and his Malizia Imoca sailing team for years. Over the subsequent days, we visited also the local offshore sailing museum and truly marvelled up close at those racing machines that people sail around the world with.
Other than that, we used the days in Lorient as sort of a city break from boat life. Sleeping late, doing laundry, stocking up supplies and enjoying drinks and food this vibrant city had to offer.
We realise that sometimes we simply need a good city vibe to recharge our social batteries. Feeling fully energised, it is now time again to hit the ocean and continue to some of Brittany’s beautiful islands.
