tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-75277708572912822182024-03-14T02:32:43.049+01:00Nous Flânons Autour Paris et FinistèreWe Amble around Paris and Brittany.Unknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger66125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7527770857291282218.post-11113238258556524972012-06-21T02:15:00.000+02:002012-06-21T02:15:01.794+02:00Really Wrapping It Up - Trees and Other Good ThingsWe've put the prettiest of our photos in a gallery of best shots. Here are just a few final thoughts on what we saw.
Paris
Paris: We liked it, but didn't fall in love with it. Partly it was the crowds: even in shoulder season the famous parts are just crammed with tourists from noon on. Cannot imagine what it would be like on a hot July day. Our advice: get to anything famous before it opens; seeUnknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7527770857291282218.post-11240346788423735142012-06-14T20:48:00.000+02:002012-06-14T20:54:05.401+02:00Wrapping it up 3 - French Restaurant ExperienceAh, France, where Julia Child and so many others learned to cook, where the very idea that eating could be an art was invented (by Brillat-Savarin).
We did have several excellent restaurant meals in France: perfectly cooked, beautifully presented. But our day-to-day search for calories brought a lot of irritation with it, too. France is where you cannot buy lunch before 12 or after 2pm, or find Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7527770857291282218.post-52188583447948853222012-06-12T23:42:00.000+02:002012-06-12T23:42:00.988+02:00Wrapping it up 2 - Our "Chipper" Credit CardFor years we've been hearing how European credit cards have a "chip" and operate with a PIN, while U.S. credit card systems have refused to change away from the mag-stripe card. We saw the chip/PIN setup in New Zealand, although our U.S. cards were accepted there. But we knew that in France, vending machines and possibly other places would not accept the U.S. style card. What to do?
Fortunately, Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7527770857291282218.post-25469323221446900502012-06-12T23:28:00.000+02:002012-06-12T23:28:50.098+02:00Wrapping It Up 1 - Cars and DrivingDriving Miss Clio
The Renault Clio is a fine little car, similar in size and amenities to the Toyota Yaris, a little larger than the VW Polo. It suited our needs well. There was plenty of room for our luggage when traveling between hotels, and lots of back-seat space for coats, hats, umbrellas and other stuff we carried every day.
We drove Clio a total of 4300 kilometers (2670 miles) in five Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7527770857291282218.post-66439967839589546022012-06-08T21:58:00.000+02:002012-06-08T22:40:57.569+02:00Cherchez L'Éléphant
In the morning we had breakfast for the third and last time at the nice place two blocks away from our hotel. The waitress recognized us and knew what we wanted for our petit dejeuner.
Then we emptied all of the stuff out of Clio that had accumulated in her in five weeks of daily use. When we were quite sure nothing was left behind (pro tip: check under the seats with a flashlight) we drove her Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7527770857291282218.post-74595330439820460362012-06-07T23:21:00.000+02:002012-06-07T23:21:14.928+02:00Motor Museum, Gacilly, Rochefort
Did three quiet things today. We had a late start, owing to have to do a mega-post to the blog from yesterday, but that turned out for the best as the weather started horrible and steadily improved all day. We drove to the town of Loheac to visit the Musée de l'Automobile, which Marian kindly included in the plan as a "guy thing" for David.
It proved to be a large museum with strong collections Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7527770857291282218.post-85950641303466326372012-06-07T10:31:00.001+02:002012-06-07T10:33:55.070+02:00Treasure Hunt on the Loire, Part TroisWe left St-Nazare to find Tadashi Kawamata's "The Observatory." All we knew about it was that it was a considerable walk from the nearest road. We started walking toward it.
"The Observatory" is far out in a marsh.
Much of the 20-minute walk was over a well-made boardwalk through reed beds.
We admired the reeds which were head-high and rustled in the wind.
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7527770857291282218.post-34445961283040030242012-06-07T10:20:00.001+02:002012-06-07T10:20:23.922+02:00Treasure Hunt on the Loire, Part Deux
The "Rough Guide to Brittany & Normandy" has nothing good to say about St-Nazare except that it's easy to find an inexpensive hotel room, but we founds lots of interesting things there.
What dominates the view as you come into the St-Nazare inner harbor is an immense, truly awesomely vast, concrete thing.
"What the heck is that?" We asked each other.
What it was, we finally pieced Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7527770857291282218.post-78356671988630480022012-06-07T09:35:00.001+02:002012-06-07T09:35:53.140+02:00Treasure Hunt on the Loire, Part Une
This was a lengthy day (and this is going to be a lengthy post as a result) but full of pleasant surprises and serendipity as a result of going on a treasure hunt for outdoor art along the Loire estuary.
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During her lengthy planning of the trip, looking for things to do out of Nantes, Marian stumbled on Nantes Estuary Art, an outdoor museum of art works scattered around the Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7527770857291282218.post-89046131315939614572012-06-06T08:24:00.001+02:002012-06-06T08:25:11.291+02:00Cathedral, and Circling the Lac
In the morning we found a wonderful bargain for breakfast: the typical juice/baguette/croissant/coffee combo €4 total for both of us. We were astonished. Typical cost up to now has been about €13 and more in hotels. David hesitated to pay as he thought he had misunderstood. The waitress thought he was complaining and hurriedly pointed out signs posted on the wall about the price. Our French, Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7527770857291282218.post-80588983161686602972012-06-04T21:57:00.000+02:002012-06-04T22:02:03.886+02:00Transit to Nantes
The main job today was to transit to our next and final base, Nantes. Shove everything in the two rolly bags—some of us are getting pretty casual about how we pack—roll down to the desk and pay the bill; roll to the car in the car park and load it; program the Garmin and head out.
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Heading out today was a bit more complicated because we hadn't had breakfast. Didn't Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7527770857291282218.post-28777157464968709702012-06-03T22:46:00.000+02:002012-06-03T22:50:40.562+02:00Miscellaneous Day around Quimper
The first thing to accomplish in Quimper was to find breakfast. The hotel serves one, but it's not very good. (How do they manage to find soft, spongy baguettes and tiny, non-flaky croissants—in a French city? It takes real shopping skill...) So we set out on foot to find an open café. Well, sorry to report, you cannot get petit dejeuner in central Quimper on a Sunday morning. Certainly Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7527770857291282218.post-18040186594042238072012-06-02T23:43:00.000+02:002012-06-02T23:49:23.591+02:00Concarneau, Trévarez, Pleyben
We did 3.5 things today: one old town (with museum), one château, and one more parish enclosure. (And Marian says there is one more yet to see.)
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Concarneau is a seaport and fishing port that has one asset precious in the modern world: an unspoiled, medieval walled island. Here's the general layout, as seen in a beautifully detailed model of the city as it was in 1967.
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7527770857291282218.post-67889814348378190642012-06-01T23:47:00.000+02:002012-06-01T23:55:02.698+02:00Day of Pleasures
Yesterday's disappointments went away with the overcast. Today's scenery was almost as good as advertised and looked better under a clear sky. Plus, we made some serendipitous discoveries. Let us start with a map of the complicated route.
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First stop was a hill, Ménez-Hom, a high point with views. We were preceded by a walking tour group whose leader was pointing out the sightsUnknownnoreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7527770857291282218.post-17979145152850835602012-05-31T19:30:00.001+02:002012-06-01T06:48:45.586+02:00Day of Disappointments
Per the plan, our excursion today should have been a scenic highlight. The guidebooks describe the run along the north coast of the peninsula out to Pointe du Raz as having dramatic cliffs and sea birds. A million French tourists come out to the point that is "land's end" to both France and Europe each summer.
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In truth you don't see much of the coast, and it isn't very Unknownnoreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7527770857291282218.post-23364404088065692012-05-30T22:32:00.000+02:002012-05-30T22:32:35.043+02:00Easy Day Around Quimper
Took it slow today. After breakfast we sat around the hotel lobby (more comfortable than our small room) for two hours and brought the blog up to date with 4 posts about the prior day. This takes both of us. We go through the pics together and decide which ones to keep. David preps the "keeps," straightening and otherwise fudging them as needed, and uploads them to smugmug. Marian goes over the Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7527770857291282218.post-21893979208161073162012-05-30T11:55:00.000+02:002012-05-30T12:00:02.011+02:00Landerneau and Plougastel-Daoulas
Getting tired? Honestly, so were we! But we stopped briefly in the town of Landerneau to see the Pont du Rohan, a bridge over the river Elorn that is occupied by houses. It's one of the last two inhabited bridges in Europe (the other is the Ponte Vecchio in Florence).
It's not as interesting as Ponte Vecchio, but it's pretty.
Especially from the upstream side.
The onlyUnknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7527770857291282218.post-13712931469401624332012-05-30T11:47:00.000+02:002012-05-30T11:47:06.971+02:00La Martyre, La Roche Maurice
We now view the oldest parish enclosure at La Martyre, dating from the 1450s.
Its most striking feature, at least the one most immediately seen, is that the church door is seriously out of plumb.
One of the figures on the door is playing lacrosse, or something very like it.
In the porch, when you reach for some holy water in the stoop,Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7527770857291282218.post-79692015894137612572012-05-30T11:40:00.000+02:002012-05-30T11:55:37.017+02:00Lampaul-Guimiliau Enclosure and Roc-Trévezel
Five minutes down a green lane to Lampaul-Guimiliau. Its spire was truncated by a lightning strike in 1809.
We liked the carved wooden door on the ossuary.
The calvary here was pretty basic. But inside, it had a carved and painted baldacchino on the baptistry,
..and carved cross-beams and light color making an airy feel to the nave.
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7527770857291282218.post-77081863810735801342012-05-30T11:19:00.000+02:002012-05-30T11:19:35.113+02:00Parish Enclosures: St. Thégonnec and Guimiliau
The first parish enclosure we hit was St. Thégonnec, named for a Breton saint about whom we know nothing.
Overview of the church and enclosure.
Its calvary was one of the last made, in 1610.
The upper part of a calvary has crucified Jesus with other figures. Lower down, the two crucified thieves. Not sure who the guys on horses are supposed to be. Romans?
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7527770857291282218.post-53791259922097870852012-05-29T23:14:00.000+02:002012-05-30T08:06:57.070+02:00To Quimper by Church
Right. Historic background. In Brittany in the late 1500s and early 1600s there was a lot of money around, an economic boom based on linen, apparently. And some of that money got put into parish churches. There was a style, then, of giving a parish church a walled enclosure within which would customarily be certain elements (besides a church): a cemetery, an ossuary (where the dry bones of Unknownnoreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7527770857291282218.post-11963210419646136562012-05-28T22:54:00.000+02:002012-05-28T22:58:23.297+02:00Twenty-four Hours of Surprises in Morlaix
Morlaix provided a number of surprises, some pleasant and some not-so.
Number one was, driving in yesterday afternoon, how dramatic the town is. It's basically built in the bottom of a deep gully at the head of a tidal river. Quite tall buildings line the streets, including some impressive half-timbered ones. And a huge 19th-century railroad viaduct spanning from ridge to ridge dominates Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7527770857291282218.post-34220945298166313302012-05-27T22:15:00.000+02:002012-05-27T22:15:50.475+02:00Slow transit to Morlaix
Today we really proved our skill as flaneurs: we ambled, we idled, we dawdled and fooled around and turned a one-hour transit from Perros-Guirec to Morlaix into a 4-hour tour, then went off for more.
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This coastline is full of little harbors each with its little resort village. No more pink granite, but on a sunny Sunday morning it's all very pretty indeed.
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7527770857291282218.post-69305146875306633222012-05-26T22:00:00.000+02:002012-05-26T22:00:12.789+02:00Good Things and Less Good
We did five "things" today, three in the original plan and two ad-hoc.
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Thing one was to take a nature walk along the Traouïéros river valley. And do not ask us how to pronounce that. Tra-oo-ee-ay-ros? (Move your mouth like Dory in the "speaking 'whale'" scene from Finding Nemo.) Anyway it's a little creek that has cut a steep valley through those granite boulders and there is Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7527770857291282218.post-38396834092795221002012-05-25T20:02:00.000+02:002012-05-25T20:02:36.805+02:00Birds of the Seven Isles and Douanier's PathWhen we got up, the area was shrouded in light fog, which created a golden light over the yacht basin.
The fog stayed around all day, making all distances hazy and lowering the contrast of the pics. Don't tell, but Photoshop has been used to blow away some of the fog from these pictures. WYSInot-quiteWYG.
After breakfast we did two things local to Perros-Guirec. First up, a boat rideUnknownnoreply@blogger.com1