Christmas Market.

Yesterday evening, I met up with some other assistants (three Welsh, one English, one American), and went to the Nantes Christmas Market. It looked really festive, with lights, tinsel, christmas trees and fake snow in every direction. It's basically row upon row of wooden sheds, with people selling their stuff from the window. The music coming out of all the speakers sounded like they might have borrowed my MP3 player though - Muse, then Kasabian followed by Scarlett Johansson. Not festive, but nice nonetheless...!

There are actually two markets in the town centre - one in Place du Commerce, near Fnac (the CD shop/HMV place) and one in Place Royale, where there's usually just a fountain and a pavement artist.

We each got a cup of steaming mulled wine and wandered around, looking at all the overpriced things for sale. Monopoly for 50€, a little wooden giraffe for 25€. I assume it's aimed at tourists, even though they don't seem to be very common in Nantes. Here's a bunch of pictures of the markets. It's quite hard to take decent pictures outside in the dark, but I managed to get a few half-decent ones:

(again, clicking on the photos makes them look a bit better)