Cat sitter on holiday – France!
Today, I am doing a bit of a different post. For once, it’s not about cat sitting! It’s about me on holiday!
Colleagues in the pet sitting industry around the world know how difficult it is to get holiday when you are a pet sitters. It is one of the major difficulties in this profession. I spoke about this multiple times on this blog, like on here and here.
Due to the nature of this business, I work in the evenings and weekends. I constantly feel very guilty towards my husband and my son that we don’t have a lot of ‘normal’ family time. Even though I know they understand (for one, my husband is also a Certified Professional Pet Sitter) but still I feel I need to make an effort to get away at least once a year so to spend time with my husband and my son.
Since having my son, these occasions are not for tourism as such anymore. We will always go visit families, either in Hong Kong or in France. One – for my son’s language exposure, two – it’s handier to have helper at the destination when you are travelling with a toddler!
Have you wondered how does a cat sitter’s holiday look like? Today, you will get to take a peek at that!
As it turns out, we end up taking pictures of cats, cat stuff for cats, cat stuff for humans, cat books, etc…
We were visiting some family in a small town in France called Luçon. To get there we took a Ryanair flight from Dublin to Nantes and then train to Luçon.
Useful information: We were staying at Appart’City Cite Des Congres overnight to take the train to Luçon the next day. The hotel apartment is very simple but clean and sufficient for very good price. You have your own very well equipped kitchen, flatscreen TV, free Wifi and a reasonable bathroom. Nothing luxury but good enough. Location is amazing. It’s close to the airport shuttle, train station and old town. We are very happy with our stay there.
Since we have one day in Nantes, we started exploring the city a bit and very quickly we discovered this cute little shop.
We immediately noticed this…
A very cute baby outfit with a cat on it, so we went straight in to browse. Then we discovered some more cute cat theme items…
In case you want to check it out when you visit Nantes in the future, here are some information for you…
Dröm
Address: 31 Rue de Verdun, 44000 Nantes, France
Website: dromdesign.fr
Phone: +33 9 51 30 42 08
Opening hours: Monday to Saturday 10a.m.–7:30p.m., Sunday Closed
The next day, we visited the main landmark – Château des ducs de Bretagne.
You can see my husband the Cat Man and my son in the shot 🙂
It’s really worth a visit even just to see the architecture. But of course, we noticed cat stuff, and this time it’s the big cat – a jaguar.
According to Wikpedia:
The Château des ducs de Bretagne (English: Castle of the Dukes of Brittany) is a large castle located in the city of Nantes in the Loire-Atlantique département of France; it served as the centre of the historical province of Brittany until its separation in 1941. It is located on the right bank of the Loire, which formerly fed its ditches. It was the residence of the Dukes of Brittany between the 13th and 16th centuries, subsequently becoming the Breton residence of the French Monarchy.
This is not a travel blog so I am not going to go on and on about the Château. I am also aware that fellow bloggers whose speciality are on travels would be doing a much better job than I do! But here are some information in case you want to visit this beautiful place too.
Château des ducs de Bretagne
Address: 4 Place Marc Elder, 44000 Nantes, France
Phone: +33 811 46 46 44
Website: http://www.chateaunantes.fr/fr
Opening hours: Tuesday to Sunday 10a.m.–6p.m. Monday closed.
After our morning visit in Nantes, we took the train to Luçon where we stayed for 10 days. There is not much to do in Luçon and that’s why it’s lovely. We got to do nothing and just relaxed!
There was a house that we walked pass nearly every day and we noticed they have a cat. Of course, I had to take a photo of this beautiful cat.
We walked into this local gift shop in Luçon one day and discovered they have a nice selection of cat theme items…
The shop owner is a very friendly lady, check this out if you ever visit Luçon.
<
p class=”r”>La Boutique de Nelly
Address: 11 Rue Georges Clemenceau, 85400 Luçon
Phone: +33 2 51 27 58 80
Website: http://www.laboutiquedenelly.fr
Opening hours: Monday to Saturday 10a.m.–12:30p.m., 2:30–7p.m., Sunday 10a.m.–12:30p.m.
As if we didn’t get enough cat cuteness, as we walked down the street from the gift shop, just two doors down, we saw THIS!
I have been told, apparently, this cat often took his/her nap at the window of this news agent during lunch hour when they close for lunch.
Later on during the opening hours, I went into the news agent to see if I can get to meet the cat but he/she wasn’t there. Instead, I got this amazing special issue magazine of which I am very pleased about! There are so many interesting cat trivia in it! It gave me so much inspiration for new blog posts!
If you ever want to visit this cat, this is the news agent…
<
p class=”name”>Maison de la Presse
Address: 13 rue Georges Clemenceau, 85400, Lucon
Telephone: 02 51 30 93 98
Opening hours: Monday to Saturday 07:30-12:30 & 14:30-19:00, Sunday 08:00-12:30
During our stay at Luçon, we were so lucky to run into a flea market day.
Of course, I immediately noticed some interesting cat items!
With Ryanair luggage limits, I couldn’t get any of the decorative stuff, but I got lucky with the book sellers and found this interesting book!
If you are interested to get this book, click on the image below will take you to Amazon.co.uk
Useful information: I accidentally discovered this amazing website where all the flea markets in France is listed. Incredible! Check this out! https://vide-greniers.org
Being in France constantly reminds us how cat-unfriendly Ireland is! In the local supermarkets, we couldn’t help but notice the huge selection of cat products.
This is Intermarche. Everything in the shot are cat products. You can zoom in if you want to have a better look. There are 10 options of cat litter! In Ireland, we are lucky if the local supermarket has 1/5 of the size of this shelf. And often, we get maybe 3 options of cat litter! Also, have you noticed they even have a cute cat silhouette on top of the shelf to show you this is a cat section? Sigh…
We also discovered this lovely series of children books at their book aisle.
We found out the original series is in English. So if you are interested in this children book series, you can check that out on Amazon by clicking the images below.
Intermarche
Address: 97 Rue du Président de Gaulle, 85400 Luçon
Phone: +33 2 51 56 11 24
Website: https://www.intermarche.com/home.html
Opening hours: Monday to Saturday 8:30a.m.–8p.m., Sunday 9a.m.–12:30p.m.
It’s not just one supermarket that has great cat selection, they all do. Hyper U is the same situation…
Cat food aisle…
Cat litter aisle…
I know! The fact that there is an aisle for cat litter! UGH!!!
And at their book shop, they even have a special promotion of all cat books! UGH!!!
You can see on the background, another special promotion is about hiking. So I guess their point of view is cat loving is a legit hobby, just like hiking.
Hyper U Luçon
Address: 20 Boulevard Michel Phelippon, 85400 Luçon
Phone: +33 2 51 56 02 06
Website: https://www.magasins-u.com/hyperu-lucon
Opening hours: Monday to Thursday 8:30a.m.–7:30p.m., Friday to Saturday 8:30a.m.–8p.m., Sunday 9a.m.–12:45p.m.
Overall we had a great time! We had a very simple holiday, just family meals, walks, going to the pool and check out the library, etc. but it was lovely to get to relax and just be with family. Being a cat sitter means we are out on the road all day every day of the year, so it’s luxury to us to be able to just sit and read a book on our holiday!
So do you spot cat stuff when you go on holiday or is it just a mad thing I do? Share your experience below! I would love to hear from you.