Change of Plans – or: the adventure of public transport

After my sad goodbye from the surfer life I intended to create a new Homebase around La Rochelle. With a rental car, all nearby cities and interesting places are supereasy to reach (max. 1,5 hours of driving) and you can do great daytrips.

So that was the idea.

But, unfortunately my credit card provider had different plans – my card is expired. And without credit card you cannot rent a car in France. To be fair: I could have know. But my new card arrived in my hometown when I already started my travels.

Therefore I had to think differently. Without rental car the exploration of Charente-Maritime (the Département in which I am currently traveling) is a real challenge. Public transportation exists, but it takes some time to understand how it works – especially with my rudimentary knowledge of French. 😀

After questioning some people and trial and error approach I still made it to those fantastic places:

La Rochelle, Île de Ré, Rochefort, Surgères, Niort and finally Île d’Oléron

xoxo anita

Lessons learned: Always take more than one credit card with you on long travels

For future generations:

• The bus provider, which services this area provides the itineraries online here: Nouvelle-Aquitaine
• Line 3 and 3E connect La Rochelle with the Île de Ré (ca. 10 times per day). Attention for your return trip from the island: the busses could be already full and you have to wait for the next one.
• Those lines stop at Rochefort and go to Île d’Oléron: 6 (starting from Rochefort) and 6E (starting from Surgères) and 7 (starting from La Rochelle)
• You pay 2,50€ per zone directly at the bus driver (e.g. Rochefort – Île d’Oléron = 2 Zones = 5 Euro)
• At the train stations you can usually find very nice staff which provides competent answers about bus and train connections.
• Trains from SNCF are frequent and rather cheap. The online itinerary is not made very clever (you see only the „best“ connection, not „all possible“ connections) – directly at the train station you have ticket machines which are smarter – all trains are displayed. At the ticket machine you pay by Maestro, EC or Credit Card.

Waiting for a bus