Some things never change

This is a postcard of a house in La Rochelle, our guess is that it was taken 40 to 50 years ago. I won’t say where it is, but if you’ve been there, you’ve probably walked past it.

Rob went out and took a photograph of it yesterday. I wonder what happened to the children.

Here comes the bus !

On the 21st March 1907 the first bus from La Rochelle went on a demonstration tour. Can you imagine the excitement in the villages where cars were rare sights, let alone a bus?

Today, La Rochelle has a splendid fleet of buses, running on environmentally friendly diesel, two ferries across the port, park and drive, bicycles and taxis.

From small acorns do mighty oaks grow…

Submarine

La Rochelle also had a submarine base. Built during world war II, Part of Raiders of the lost ark was filmed there in 1981. The port of ‘La Pallice’ as it is known was originally built in 1890. As you can see from this postcard, submarines were around the port even during WWI.

A view of La Rochelle

All you have to do is substitute the horses and carts for cars and you would see that nothing has changed over the last 100 years. The shops are very different though, most of them today are bars or (real)estate agents.

This is where I live

It hasn’t changed that much since 1900 when this card was sent. Unfortunately the boats have changed. There are more people who sail for leisure and fewer fishing boats.

Some new postcards

We’re very excited about some new postcards that we bought this week. They are mainly of La Rochelle and are in excellent condition. Recently a shop in town which dealt with postcards, stamps and coins closed down and I can’t help wondering if they come from there originally. For a little while I’ll be sharing a few views of the town. This first postcard is of a street in the quarter where I used to live. Nothing much has changed at all, except that the shop has gone. I’m fascinated by the goods on display, especially the little horse…

I am here!

It seems such a long time since I last posted. Here’s a souvenir from La Rochelle. The little envelope opens up to reveal a set of miniature postcards of La Rochelle.

Charruyer Park

This is the park in La Rochelle, it hasn’t really changed at all. I’ve been looking through some postcards of the park and there often appear to be the same pair of swans. Today we have black swans too. The park was left to the town by Madame Charruyer about 150 years ago. The ‘lungs’ of La Rochelle, it stretches for a length of 2 kilometres through the middle of town.

La Rochelle Ladies

These ladies are typical of the women who worked along the shore at the beginning of the 20th century. There lives would have been very hard. The climate is cold, damp and very windy in winter and the summer sun is very hot. Throughout history the women of La Rochelle have been special, The first was Eleanor Of Aquitaine who owned la Rochelle, she married the King of France and later the King of England. I’m sure that the women of La Rochelle would have played a courageous part in the sieges where many Rochelais lost their lives. The women of La Rochelle were also amongst the most determined passengers to the Americas.

Later on, some of the ladies of La Rochelle were to become famous amongst sailors and ships crews from all over the world….

Avenue Coligny

When we first came to live in France, 22 years ago, we lived in a flat/apartment at the top of one of the houses in this street. The street hasn’t changed much at all since this postcard was printed, except that the house we lived in had been rebuilt because a plane crashed into it during World War II. The trees are not the same ones, a few days before I arrived the trees had been cut down because of disease. They are fully grown again today.

Vintage postcards

In recent years my husband, Rob has been collecting vintage postcards, mainly of the town where we live, La Rochelle, which has lots of history and interesting buildings. Gradually he started to get duplicate cards and because of this he had the idea of selling cards on eBay. The next stage was a visit to the auction rooms in town one day when they were holding a postcard, coin and stamp auction. Pretty soon we had a collection of beautiful cards from all over France.

For me the fascinating part is reading what was written on the back. All human life is there. The saddest cards are the ones sent by soldiers fighting during the First World War. My mother-in-law contributed a very special card fom Paris which had been sent back to England in 1917. Her mother-in-law had kept it carefully over the years. Her fiance had sent it to her when he was on leave. He was killed the following year.

The card above is one of my favourites. The park in La Rochelle is still the same today.