The cottage in Brittany was just what we needed. It was ancient, built of stone with a dark wood spircal staircase in what might have been a stone tower, in a line of stone houses with a line of barns across the road.
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| The Gite Kitchen |
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| A Room |
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| Lunch Outside |
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Food and drink were good in France, for the most part. The Breton wine was as bad as we should have expected. Muscadet from Nantes is good, though– a fresh, dry, white wine. Pommeau is good too. It’s a combination of sweet cider and calvados apple brandy, a style similar to port but lighter.
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| Some Bad Breton Gamay Rose and Some Good Pommeau |
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| Good Loire Gamay |
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We were near Cancal, famous for oyster farming. We baked the oysters, a good way to cook them.
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| Cancal Oysters |
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One supermarket had an impressive machine for labelling the fresh produce you were buying.
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| Weighing Your Own Vegetables |
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The first beach we went to was at St. Lunaire, near Dinard.
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| All Five on the Beach |
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| L and l in L’Eau |
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| Buried |
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Collecting shellfish was prohibited, and apparently immigrants were unpopular there too.
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| Arabes and Negres? |
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We visited St. Malo, at one time the great Atlantic port of France, and a center for pirates. It has an old walled city with a castle, 80% destroyed during WW II but then rebuilt in the old style. The cathedral was boring, the souvenir shops fascinating, the beach satisfactory, the views excellent.
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| Faith Spots Something |
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| Rock Pools |
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| The Skyline |
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Firemen with medievally brilliant helmets were up to something.
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| Firemen in St. Malo |
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We had a hard time finding toilets. One reason was that the two signs pointed at each other over a distance of 50 yards. Another was that the toilet door itself was unmarked, revealed only by the slots and instructions for payment on the side of the tax building.
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| Toilettes–Go Left |
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| Toilettes– Go Right |
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We didn’t go into the castle, but we ate hot dogs and mussels and frites at a cafe below it.
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| St. Malo Castle |
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Another day we went to Dinan (not to be confused with Dinard, just as St. Brieux is not to be confused with St. Briac).
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| A View from Dinan Castle |
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| Dinan’s Clock Tower |
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| A Dinan Street |
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