Fight for the Night

We went out. Finally! Luba and I fought the urge to stay in and nest and got our Saturday night on! There is a club venue here in Nantes called Hangar a Bananes, which is a bit of a trek (its on an island and a 20 minute walk from the Tram stop) but we figured if we kept saying “we’ll TOTALLY go next weekend”, it’d never happen. So I whipped out my Google map skills, located the club complex via aerial photograph, used a website that I use to map distances for running to calculate the distance from Tram stop to the front door (it was 1.38 miles), checked the weather report, and bought a bottle of supermarket brand vodka. After the 3-S’s of night-out preparation (Shit, Shower, and Shave) I was ready!



Turns out that though Google maps shows you the street layout, they don’t tell you that you might have to walk for 15 minutes through a construction site that may or may not be closed to the public. Luba and I were pretty drunk from “front-loading” in my room and I just told her “pretend we’re walking in a sand-box” (because that’s really fun when you’re wearing Gucci Boots and cashmere?).


Once we found the complex it was wondrous! Hangar a Bananes is a huge warehouse overlooking the water at the end of the Ile de Nantes that houses about 15 bars and clubs. We had a moment in about 4 different bars, mixed rum with vodka, I knocked over a trashcan, Luba chatted with her Mom at 1:15am (sometimes you gotta make do with the time difference between France and Alaska, even when you’re trashed at a bar with an island theme…), took some photos next to the urinals in a bathroom with cool graffiti, and then ran (again through the construction site) to catch the last Tram home at 2:30. We’re officially no longer those Americans hanging out in the dorm kitchen on a Saturday night choosing to drink 0.95 Euro wine till 11pm instead of going out.