Ile d’Aix & La Rochelle
The sun was not yet on the horizon as we lowered the anchor just off the lovely island of Ile d’Aix. We left National Geographic Explorer at 8:30am on our first zodiac expedition of the cruise. We boarded them without a hitch as if we had been doing it for years!
The Napoleon Museum is five minutes from the pier. The museum is now housed in a building that Napoleon had constructed in 1808 and, ironically, it was from this same house where he left for his imprisonment to the island of St. Helena in July of 1815.
This lovely island, while tiny (less than 2km long), has a long and distinguished history. It first appears in the historical record with the construction of an 11th century Romanesque church. The church of St. Martin is still there and presently holds the bones of the 37 young priests who were deliberately drowned during the reign of terror of the French Revolution. The house is now filled with Napoleon memorabilia and is surprising for the variety of artifacts it contains from the clocks all stopped at the hour of his death, to the wallpaper impregnated with arsenic which papered the rooms of his home in exile. This wallpaper is reputed to have caused his death but more recent studies of tissue from Napoleon do not show sufficient arsenic to have caused a death. Another urban legend comes to grief.
Directly across the street from the Napoleon Museum is the remarkable African Museum containing a wide display of stuffed animals and artifacts. Indeed the great camel in the center of the main hall was actually brought back from Napoleon’s Egyptian campaign.
After our museum visits most of us also went for lovely walks on this peaceful island.
After lunch we visited the elegant 18th century city of La Rochelle. Although the city received its first city from Eleanor of Aquitaine in 1199, its architectural fabric is largely 17th and 18th century.
Eleanor is one of the most remarkable women in history and was the wife and mother of at least four kings (see the wonderful biography by Amy Kelly, Eleanor and the Four Kings). La Rochelle was the center of the French Protestant movement and the site of the notorious massacre and siege under the direction of Cardinal Richelieu in 1627. Richelieu succeeded and of the 28 thousand citizens only 5 thousand survived when he ended the siege in 1628. He had effectively destroyed the Protestant tradition in France and forced the remainder to migrate. The city of New Rochelle just outside New York City was founded by these fleeing French Protestants (called Huguenots).
The city of La Rochelle is justifiably famous for the Vieux Port (the Old Port) which is surrounded by cafes and restaurants. A number of us took the opportunity to have a coffee or beer and simply enjoy the pleasure boats bobbing in the harbor. The port is guarded by the two large gothic towers. The houses of La Rochelle are constructed of a pale, almost white limestone, which combined with the austerity of the neo-Classical design is deeply satisfying. The whole provides a symmetry which is deliberately engineered to produce a sense of order and harmony.
We boarded our shuttle busses back to the ship and had a recap at 7 and another wondrous dinner after.
