Well we set off on Friday 21st May to Brittany to see my cousin Janette and family. Our first stop was the
port city of St Malo, what a beautiful place, this was the largest city outside of Paris we had been to so far. The
original old part of St Malo is a walled city out in the harbour and today's weather was 24 degrees, just perfect, blue sky and an aquamarine ocean.
We strolled the quaint streets and walked around the city walls and ramparts, great views in every direction. Lots of
people on the beaches soaking up the sun. Many boats in the harbour from old 4 masted sailing ships to modern catermeran
ferries, lots of fishing boats and a massive container terminal.
Lunch was the highlight of the day, with more than 50 food places to choose from it was just a challenge deciding where
to eat, fresh seafood won out in the end, why not with all this ocean surrounding us it promised to be good.
We were not disappointed, the platter we had was great, crabs, langostines (like a large prawn but tastes like crayfish),
prawns, bulots (conch shellfish), pippies and more, we were in heaven, of course it comes stacked on 2 large platters on
a vertical stand so everyone in the restaurant and all the people passing by can see what you've ordered. It's hard to
eat something like this and be inconspicuous. Sitting out in the sun with a bottle of cold rose, it was perfect, we
dedicated this lunch to our 29th wedding anniversary which if you remember was actually spent with Yogi very sick in hospital.
We set out from St Malo to visit nearby Dinard, which is only across the harbour but 20 mins by road, a nice town
surrounding nice beaches it reminds us of parts of Sydney, Bondi beach, Clovelly beach except the sand is not as clean.
Time to hit the motorway again and head deeper into Brittany.
We picked a spot on the map, a large town on the coast St Bruieac, with hopefully some nice beach side hotels and set off with the GPS
giving directions. As we got closer to this town we realised that it might not actually be on the coast, disappointment
number one, disappointment number two came shortly after when we hit peak hour traffic, trying to navigate in a foreign
city at peak hour with the GPS programmed to take us to the town centre is scary stuff. We eventually made it out of the
centre but had no idea what direction we were heading.
Getting late now so we had to find a hotel soon.
We remembered seeing on the motorway a whole strip of hotels and decided to try locate them, we used the GPS again and
thought we were saved but found that within minutes we had ventured into a small outer suburb town centre that was being
prepared for a bike race, roads were being barricaded, roundabouts being blocked, so here we are with the GPS saying turn
right here only to be blocked at each turn, we soon realised that we were the only car on the road, we were caught up in
the actual bike race! We had groups of cyclists in front and behind and angry men at the road blocks shouting at us in
French, all we could do was respond with the usual Bonjour Monsieur!!! They eventually opened a barricade and set us free.
Disappointment number three was spending the night in a Motorway motel and not on the beach as planned.
Day two of the Brittany trip was to head for the town of Carhaix and meet up with Janette, the drive through the
countryside was beautiful, very green and rolling hills with great streams and rivers, we saw many people with canoes and
kayaks on the roads and passed quite a few cyclists.
We arrived in Carhaix just before lunch and was met by Janette and taken to their beautiful house, they live in a country
setting but are only 2 minutes out of town, very private and with great views. The kitchen overlooks a large pond fed by
a stream, the pond is stocked with fish. We sat on the patio had a great lunch with a few drinks and got to know each
other. Brian, Janettes husband, is a builder/renovator and has his own business he was telling us lots of good things
about buying and renovating in France, you could see Chris thinking very deeply about this.
Well the rest of the day was
great, we all went out for dinner to a Pizza restaurant and back to stay the night, even though we were family we started
off almost total strangers but left good friends. Chris and I were very quiet in the car when we left and would have
turned back in an instant to stay longer, they will just have to come to Perth and see our world.
The plan after Carhaix was to head for the southern coast of Brittany and just explore, with no place in mind we picked a
town, Le Pouldi, on the coast and hit the road. The scenery was great with more rolling hills and valleys, the coast when we got
there was beautiful, we drove from one little village to the next. We ended in a large town called Lorient, very
picturesque and reminded us a lot like Fremantle. Sun, sand, boats and cafes, the temperature for the last few days had
been in the high 20's but today was 30 degrees, the beaches were busy as well as the bars on the promenade.
We visited the town of Port Louis on the other side of the harbour and toured around a large citadel built in the 1400's,
it was an absolutely stunning piece of history. We spent the night in Lorient.
On the return trip to our cottage we felt a bit peckish for lunch and detoured off the motorway at a town called
Forgues, this was a totally random decision that turned out to be a great decision. The town was one of the medieval
castle towns with a castle and ramparts built from 950AD - 1600AD, we love these old towns, you have to see them to believe them.
This town was part of a defensive line of towns built in the 900's to keep the vikings out, over time they were developed
into full castles with walled cities to keep the English out! So much history, we keep referring to our part of Australia,
I think the Roundhouse building in Fremantle is our oldest existing building and that was built around 1820, makes us
look pretty young in the eyes of the world.
This lunch stop topped of a perfect three days exploring Britanny, we could have spent weeks but there is so much to see
where ever we go. Back home to our little cottage, safe and sound.
