Getting around Saint Nazaire

Transport in Saint Nazaire

Once you get to Saint Nazaire, you have to figure out how to get around the city. As I have said in my other blog posts, Saint Nazaire is a very big city, so if you thought you could walk everywhere, good luck for seeing everything in time. From my student residence to the city centre is a 30 minute walk and to get to the beach from my front door is an extra 20 minutes. That is why trying to walk everywhere is not easy, so the best options to get around are:

• Bus: This is the best option you have for long journeys. Everyone has to go to the centre no matter where you live in the city, whether that is the bank, the post office, the shops, the town hall, the train station... The bus isn't expensive and if you get a monthly ticket, it is even cheaper. But there are also tickets that last a week and a fortnight respectively, but you can decide which ticket suits you best. If you don't use it much, you can just buy a single ticket whenever you need to, you don't have to get one of the deals. For the local bus a ticket costs 1 euro. At some stops in the city (the busier ones), there are machines where you can get tickets from, where you can buy 10 tickets for 7 euros, which works out cheapest (70 cent a journey, the same cost as a single ticket in Valladolid).

  

  Image source: http://www.agglo-carene.fr/64379402/0/fiche___pagelibre/&RH=DEPLURB

  There are lots of different routes around the city centre, every part of the city is linked, from the beach to the centre and from Saint Marc to any other point. There is also a line that takes you to some of the villages surrounding the city such as La Baule or Pornichet, which you can get to using your bus pass or with a single ticket. The buses are electric and all have disabled access and facilties. There is a special lane on many roads just for buses so they are usually very punctual, regardless on the time of day and the amount of traffic.

  

  Image source: http://www.metalocus.es/content/es/blog/intercambiador-intermodal-de-saint-nazaire

• Bike: The Saint Nazaire council offers bikes to students, and to anyone else who needs them. The only condition is leaving a deposit of 100 euros incase the bike isn't returned and you keep it, but you lose 100 euros, it's as simple as that. This system is good for students who aren't spending a full year in Saint Nazaire. If you are spending a while in Saint Nazaire and you want your own bike, there are lots of second hand ones for sale for a really low price on the University of Nantes web page. They usually cost around 30/40 euros, but a lot of them are quite old. There are lots of spaces to lock them up all over the city and there are shelters in case it rains. As well as this, there is a bicycle track in most parts of Saint Nazaire, which connects almost the whole city, except from Saint Marc, but there is a normal road to get there.
• Car: If you have your own car and you live in one of the residencies, it is really simple to park because in all of the university departments, there are big, free car parks for students, and private spaces for teachers. And not only in Sainte Nazaire, but in the surrounding towns the parking is just as good. It isn't a good idea to take your car to the city centre because all the areas are 'blue zones' and you have to pay to park which is often more expensive than taking the bus. But parking at the beach is much easier, especially if you park in the streets of Saint Marc.

Getting to different cities

But if you want to travel the region more and visit all the cities you can and you don't have a car (the same as me), you have to main options: Blablacar or taking the train.

• Blablacar: This is the best option for me. It is a website where drivers advertise a journey that they are planning to make on a certain day, at a certain time, showing the start and end destination. The other part of the website (which is for us)allows you to search for a journey that suits you best. The price is decided by the driver and the cheaper ones are always the most popular. You send a message to the driver and say which part of the city you want to be picked up from and where you need to be dropped off. In France, it is all done automatically, you pay online before the journey so that it is all secure. And you get a small deposit back once you have given the code to the driver after the journey. The first time I went to Nantes on the train, I paid around 15 euros for the way there and the same for the way back and so wasted 30 euros on a journey that lasted under an hour which just doesn't seem right. So when a flatmate first told me about Blablacar, the first thing I did was compare prices to see how much cheaper it was (I'm a student). And from then I started to use this website to travel to the area. The same journey from Sainte Nazaire to Nantes costs around 3-5 euros. And when I just went for the day, I only had to take my backpack with four things. Some people have had problems, but it is normal really. At least I've never had any troubles, all my journyes have been fine. That is why it is my favourite mode of travel.
• Train: As you can imagine, the train is a lot more expensive than using Blablacar. But it is also quicker, more punctual and you can take more baggage. From Sainte Nazaire, whether you want to go north or south, you have to go through Nantes. The French rail network is very efficient, but tickets are expensive unless you find discounts or buy them well in advance. There are some cheaper options for teenagers and students, but even still, the price is high. On the SNCF web page, which is the national rail company in France, you can find all the information you need for buying tickets, the times and the destinations.

One of the most common modes of transport in Spain is getting the bus from one city to another, but in France it isn't as common. The big cities that have a good rail service surprisingly don't have many regular connecting lines. In Saint Nazaire, there were just local buses to the surrounding towns but you couldn't get there on the train.

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