A day in La Rochelle and a lovely dinner 7-1-16

After talking with Mollie we established that Don, Charlie, Michael, and she were going sailing for a few hours in the morning when it was likely to be a bit cooler and then would be returning a bit later then they would contact us with a place to meet for dinner.   So we spent the morning doing a bit of a walking tour of the city center and had a lovely lunch in a square that very much reminded us of a square in Madrid or Venice.  It was away from the major traffic patterns of the town and therefore quiet. It's very scenic and inviting.

It also turned out to have a really good little restaurant where we ate a quite good lunch.  There was a historic plaque giving the history and I expected it to be the site of many interesting historical facts. But ha-ha, it turned out to have been created in 1971 when several dilapidated buildings were torn down to create the square. After lunch we headed back to the hotel for a couple hours of cool rest; while there we got a text with the details for our dinner meeting. So we headed to the City Aquarium before meeting everyone for dinner.  The heat had abated some so it wasn't sweltering like yesterday, still hot though.
Wow, what a nice aquarium in La Rochelle, many displays with mini ecologies for sea around Western France and branching out to the French administered territories around the world.  We had a leisurely visit and then took a water taxi over to the inner harbor to meet Don and company for dinner.  

We made our first face to face acquaintance with Mollie and Charlie, whom we felt we already knew through Don's stories and descriptions and it was completely delightful.  We also met Michael for the first time and were regaled with fun and interesting sailing tales. Another outstanding seafood dinner followed and a general all around good time.  We finished dinner about 10:45 and had to push off to get to the hotel by 11:00 before the night shift buttoned things up for the night.   We missed it by about 10 minutes but luckily the desk person was still finishing up and we got in without any problems.