La Rochelle Transportation

Bus de Mer ferry:
From the city centre to the Minimes marina and back.

Electric shuttle boat
The electric shuttle boat takes you across La Rochelle's harbour channel in just minutes. Non-stop service from Cours des Dames to the Ville-en-Bois district on the other side. Bikes allowed!

It is necesary to go to La Rochelle with a private car. This is because, there are several place of interests that are scattered around, especially the beach points.
But you enjoy the town by just walking it.
One may also need to take scheduled boat ride to other interesting Islands around this coaster town.

All we had to do was follow the signs for Laleu but getting out of La Rochelle was a nightmare and finding the right route was worse, my map showed the airport just to the north of the bridge to Ile De Re, it`s just to the south (turn off to the right before you get there) at the end of the Rue de Jura, when we got there it was so small and a 2 seater flew over us that we were convinced that this was a provincial airfield and went to look for the big planes, no luck. Eventually we went back and spotted a Hertz office, we could off load the car here and taxi to the airport but it turned out that this WAS the airport.
We were so relived that we opened a bottle of Champagne and sat in the sun while we waited, the best way to end a good holiday.

By road, from Brussels to LR

Towns of the Atlantic region are served by the A10 motorway. It crosses the area from North to South. Most towns are only a few kilometres away from the entries/exits of the A10 motorway, exits n°33, n°34, n°35, n°36, n°37, n°38.

From the A10, the French and European network of motorways makes the big European cities easily and safely accessible.

From south of England, the easiest way is to catch a fast ferry from Portsmouth to St Malo with Brittany Ferries. From St-Malo: some six hour drive. Or take the route to Le Havre, then to drive to Charente-Maritime.

Our way to la Rochelle was by motorway (autoroute) since we were in a hurry.

From LR to Brussels

But the return (LR-Bru) was via route nationales and départementales. Then we could see the cities, the villages, the castles in regions we were driving through... My travelmates could visit the 24 heures du Mans circuit (see pic). :)

It was easy, we just worked on a map about the itinerary, according places we wanted to see. Then set out which nationales, departementales to take not to miss the places...

For other transportations means, check the website.

Important place in La Rochelle as far as transportation is concerned.

*If you go to La Rochelle by car, the underground of this place houses multi-storey parking lots. Park your car there. You can rent bicycles there (if I recall it right, 2 first hours were free;)

*Place Verdun is one of places that houses the electric car pools and specific parking with reloading facilities.

*Place Verdun is an important bus stop that serves as ending station for bus lines.

*Electric cars

From La Rochelle to be the first french city to encourage the use of electric cars, why not give it a try?

Near place Verdun, you would find electric cars parking lots, with cars being reloaded.

*Cycling

La Rochelle is a bicycle-friendly city, lost of city streets are free of car, that makes it even easier to cycle.

*Walking

Highly recommendable, to discover and appreciate hidden treasures.

Airport Transfers from La Rochelle at PeteMarshall222@Hotmail.com