Exploring Nantes: A Family Adventure with the Mechanical Elephant

We took a road trip through France with planned stops in Paris, Rouen, and St John De Monts where we spent the week surfing and barely left the beach. But one of the most memorable stops on our trip wasn’t one we’d planned at all.

We were driving from St John De Monts to Rouen and passed a sign for Nantes. I remembered reading about the Mechanical Elephant in Nantes when we went to see the Mechanical Dragon (which is in Calais) and started telling the kids about it. That was that! We took a spur of the minute detour.

Sometimes the best trips are the ones you don’t plan!

Because we hadn’t made a plan and is was the height of the summer, we didn’t actually ride the elephant. Tickets have to be prebooked OR you queue to buy them on the day and the queue was enormous. Instead, we walked along side him. This was actually more fun for the kids, because he squirts water at passersby, and they loved walking in front of the elephant and getting soaking wet through.

If you do want to ride the elephant then tickets are priced at 9.50 euros per adult and 7.50 euros per child between the ages of 3-17. You can book these tickets in advance here if you’re more organised than us!

The Island of Machines

The Elephant of Nantes is part of a wider project in the city known as the island of machines. These are all incredible Jules Verne inspired steam punk constructions, each one as detailed and interesting as the next. The kids didn’t know what to look at first!

The elephant travels between his shelter (which is where the workshop is, as well as the tree of life and other attractions) to a huge 3 storey carousel which is also made up of moving wooden machines.

This is called the Machine Gallery and although you CAN prebook tickets, you don’t have to! Continuous sales and access are offered here, with immediate entry. So we decided to give this a go!

Tickets for this cost 11 euros per adult and 9 euros per child aged between 3-17. You can book these here.

This ticket allowed us to tour all 3 levels of the gallery and its machines. We were then allowed to ride the machine carousel: we chose to ride the huge dragon on the top floor. And this machine gallery also has a huge viewing platform, which is a great place to view the elephant from a higher level, really appreciating the work and the detail that went into carving such a magnificent thing.

Other Things To Do In Nantes

Because this was such a last minute trip, and because we had a hotel reservation in Rouen for that evening (which was a several hour drive away), we didn’t have time to explore as much of Nantes as we would have liked. But there were other things to do for kids in the Isle de Machines that meant they could have spent the whole day there.

Simple things like playground equipment and playground games gave them the opportunity to run around and let off some steam before we got back in the car. There was also a ‘bubble man’ (you’ll find them in every big city in Europe!) blowing giant bubbles that the kids loved to chase and try to pop.

The boys spent a full half an hour doing this, while we sat with a drink watching them and just soaking it all in. Just be sure to throw a few Euros in his box! There is then a smaller Jules Verne-inspired carousel for children to ride, so we made sure they got to ride this too. Then we climbed up the mechanical tree, another spot to get an amazing close up look at the elephant as he passes you.

From the island of Machines you can get amazing views of the river and of the skyline of Nantes. And just behind the structure is a maritime museum.

In total we spent around 4 hours in Nantes, and it left us wishing we could stay a little longer. If we’d had more time we would have also visited the city’s Natural History Museum which is huge, and has an 18 metre long whale skeleton in the zoology gallery that we would have loved to see.

Or if you want to continue the Jules Verne themed day, there is actually a museum dedicated to Nantes most famous son in the city. The museum is housed in the city’s Chantenay district, which is where the Verne family had a weekend home, and is a great place to learn more about his work and his inspirations.

If you have a whole day in the city then I would suggest exploring the machines in the morning, stopping for a delicious lunch, then picking a second museum for your afternoon adventure!

Have you been to Nantes? Is there anything else I should add to our bucketlist of things we need to see and do here on our next visit?

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