Adventure in Bretagne and Air France

Well...after a brilliant blue sky day on Monday the clouds rolled in and stayed pretty solidly with us until the day we were packing to leave. I guess this is the Bretagne we all hear about! It wasn't really cold, just completely overcast with on and off mist all day long.

We decided we wanted to have some "moules/frites" (mussels and fries) so we took JC's mom over to Concarneau to a little restaurant we like there right across from the walled citadel city.

Oscar is ready to eat everything and Maya likes moules so we were all set.

While we had our lunch we were entertained by this Breton singer who was playing an ancient instrument and performing old songs.

Do you see the cute red deux chevaux back there brightening up the scene???

We walked into the citadel for a short visit along with a throng of tourists.

We did a quick look around and headed back to Benodet for some drawing and naps all around. The sea air really can do you in! There were gorgeous flowers planted along the street by the harbor. A real contrast with the gray skies above.

The mail carrier in Benodet rides a bike which is just like the mail carriers of old in France!!!

JC took his mom home and I waved from our windows.

Anton, Emmanuelle and Oscar began the long drive home on Friday...it was going to be a very busy travel weekend in France as everyone started out for vacation and there were predictions of 700km bottlenecks on the highways. As it was, they spent three hours in a traffic jam near Valence in 90 degrees!! The nightmare of French holidays.
We were slated to leave on Saturday morning by plane from Brest when we were contacted by Air France that our flight was cancelled due to a....strike! Remember, we are in FRANCE... land of the STRIKE.
In order to make it back to Carpentras we made train reservations but from Quimper. This meant we had to return the rental car to Brest (they have no office in Quimper for some reason????) and rent a second car in Quimper. We drove in line to Brest to drop the car and then back to Quimper with the other car.
Saturday morning Air France notified us that we had been booked onto the later flight which was operating in spite of the strike. We cancelled our train reservations and spent a part of the morning with Maya on the beach and having lunch at the harbor. We began our drive north again to Brest and were almost there when we got a text from Air France to say our new flight had been cancelled!!! Too late to catch the train we had cancelled since it had left an hour before. This meant, rescheduling the train at a much higher price and staying overnight in a hotel near the station in Quimper. Our train was leaving at 9:30 am the next day and we would arrive at 7:00pm...so much for high speed trains out of Bretagne!!
By Saturday afternoon the sun was coming out in Quimper and we decided we would have a great time in a medieval city we would not have been able to see.

We visited the cathedral.

Maya did several turns on the merry go round...once in the Nautilus submarine and once on the lion.

We had a delicious crèpe and some cider for a snack and then walked up and down the wonderful streets which looked like they came straight out of a fairytale.

I asked Maya to pose as a very busy little Breton girl who had serious things to do!!!

This Mercerie has a little table and a chair set up outside for the "husband" or other non stitcher person to sit and wait while the other is shopping!!! This would be for JC I think! There is lots of embroidery going on in Bretagne!

Here are some of the posters we saw throughout town.

 Love the colors and choice of pictures here...note all the bits of embroidery:

I'm wondering about this "noise festival" in Landerneau????

We had a nice dinner by the river in a restaurant we like (L'epée) and then walked back to the Hotel de la Gare which had been newly redone.

We stayed in the Max Jacob wing and our room overlooked a courtyard. All of us were so tired that no-one thought to take a picture.

Sunday morning bright and early we were at the station with a crowd of people.

This is a really pretty ceramic wall in the small, cozy station.

The train from Quimper was clean and smooth as a breeze. A really nice two hour trip.

We had to change trains in Nantes. The station in Nantes is just plain awful!

It is dirty and very poorly organized and compared to the station in Quimper it is one to avoid for train changes if at all possible. We had to go outside behind a bush because there was one awful toilet and the line to use it might still be there today it was so long!!! I'm glad we had only an hour to wait to board the next train.

Unfortunately this was not the same clean and cheerful train as the one from Quimper but luckily I had "The Lion King" on the iPad so part of the very looooong journey was dedicated to the film.

Almost seven hours later we rolled into Avignon. Whew! What a series of days. The end of our adventure to Bretagne!

A bientôt from sunny Provence.