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Timeframe: Dec 8, 2008Today we turn to the west and head for Quiberon and Belle-Isle!
This is just a picture I took out the window while we're driving there. It's pretty, but its definitely not the pastoral France I keep talking about. Craig tried to get me to take more pictures out of the car this trip, but none of them really came out well. I guess that's what happens when you're going 150 kph. Well, maybe we weren't going that fast in this picture, I mean, that speed limit sign does say 70 kph, and Craig would never speed :)
Quiberon is a peninsula jutting out into the Atlantic ocean. So this is a picture off one side. I tried to get one pointing the other way for effect, but with the sun in my eyes the other picture turned out too dark.
So now that we finally get to Quiberon (at about 1 pm, we were always getting late starts) it seems that there is one boat that will take us over to Belle-Isle, but it will cost us at least € 260 to bring the car with us. Since the last boat leaves the island at 6 pm we would only have 3 hours to wander around, without a car, we weren't going to be able to see much that the guide book told us about. And if we missed our ship back the next boat didn't come back until 5 hours after Craig's flight left in the morning. So sadly, we didn't go to Belle Isle after all (maybe I'll try and head back on my own, at this point it's that or London). So we headed over to Nantes instead since it had a castle and Nantes was closer to Rennes than anything else we could think of doing.
Timeframe: Dec 7, 2008Well, after going to church and going to our favorite little bakery for yummy french bread sandwiches Craig and I headed out to Saint-Malo.
These are a few pictures of the beach near where we parked. Parking in France is not fun (although I don't find it much fun downtown in the states either). Just think of it as trying to find a parking spot downtown no matter where you're going. Every town is all downtown all the time :)
Which leads us to our next problem. See that city of in the distance, that's actually Saint-Malo, we have to walk over there now. It's not that far away, just a mile or so.
Here's one of the streets in Saint Malo. It seems like most streets in other French cities, except that even though most of the streets here seem pedestrian-only here there are tons of cars around. And there are only a few entrances into the old city anyway, why bring a car in here?
Okay, okay, I know what you're saying. Another cathedral? Come on Brad show us something else. But wait, this is different. Okay, the cathedral looks the same, but that's not what I want to show you here. As we were walking into this particular cathedral I noticed this guy in a trench coat go in just before us. The reason I noticed is because it looked like he had no pants on (in December!). Well, turns out he was a weirdo, but in a totally good way.
So, most of you have probably been in a cathedral before (if not, for this exercise you can think of a really big library instead). It's big, and everyone's doing their very best to be quiet and reverent. But then, a voice starts up in the distance. This singular male voice filling the entire cathedral with Gregorian chant. Notice I said one guy, not an entire choir, but just a single man (the guy in the trench coat). And when I say it filled the entire cathedral, I mean it. His voice is echoing off every surface as if this guy has trained his whole life for this. It's absolutely amazing!
Craig and I just sit down and listen to this guy while he sings for 10 or 15 minutes or so. Now don't think we forgot about you watching (and listening) at home. Luckily for us my camera not only takes pictures, but movies! Unforutnately, I don't know how to upload a movie to Google, so I've put it on my school site. Don't worry about what it looks like (its really dark and blurry actually), the important thing is to listen to what this guy sounds like, it's so cool!
Warning, link is about 110 MB. It's a zip file that contains all the movies I took of this guy. I hope it plays on Windows Media player, but I know it plays in VLC and Quicktime. Single Gregorian Chanter
Back to the more secular world, it looks like the French enjoy going out on Sundays. Most of the places we've been were fairly deserted (even on Saturday), but Sunday the French are out in force.
Just a pretty man hole cover.
Saint Malo is another walled city, and it lets you up on the ramparts to wander around the city. The walls give you great views of the streets beneath and out onto the water.
Ah Brittany, such beautiful coast line. I think it might even give B.C. a run for it's money.
I don't know exactly why, but out in the middle of the water (when the tide is up) there's a fortress. Unfortunately we couldn't go inside (not allowed except with a paid tour guide, and they don't work Sundays for some reason). But it was quite the sight.
Here are some more shots of the Brittany coast line. Some people even come out here to fish apparently.
And then a view of Saint Malo from the beach itself. What a nice little town.
Since once we were done (ie it got dark) it was once again the French dead-food hour (before 7:00 pm). So, we decided to walk back to the car and drive it back to a parking lot that was much closer to the city (just outside the gates). By the time we got back we were just in time to eat at our fancy little hole-in-the wall French restaurant. They didn't disappoint! I had a thin slice of fresh salmon as an appetizer (Craig seemed to love his oysters, but they were too salt watery for me), and then some nice veal with a Roquefort sauce. I finished it off with some Brittany Tiramisu (not bad, but not Palermo's). All in all, it was a great day!
Timeframe: Dec 6, 2008Since we finished touring the castle during the French dead-food-hour (before 7:00 pm) we decided we'd drive half way back to Rennes and stop for dinner in LeMans instead. We came in from the south east end of the city and were very not-impressed. That was, until we got to the other side of the city and noticed that the entire city was a castle and had it's own wall! 
This is the entrance through the wall (which is now obviously a street). You can either go over top of it on foot, or through the wall itself using this road. If you notice, there seem to be lit niches on the sides. What could be in them?
Well it looks like they put Christmas decorations in them for the holidays. They also had some weird looking diabolic burned looking bodies, but I won't post those pictures :) We'll think happy Christmas thoughts instead.
Right on top of this entrance we found a small hole-in-the-wall place called the King's Fool (Le Fou du Roi) which is where we had dinner. It was pretty good serving traditional fancy French food. I ordered the back of something (didn't know the word) thinking that any thing that had a back had to be meat. Well, it turns out that white fish can have backs too! I also had my frst Île Flottant (floating island) which was only so/so. Craig seemed to really like what he had ordered though if I remember correctly.
It seems that to find real 'French' food you have to go looking for the small hole-in-the-wall places. When Kevin left we went to his favorite restaurant in all of Rennes, and it was also a tiny little hole-in-the-wall crêperie, so maybe it's considered normal in France. I mean, I guess most of the best places Craig talks about are little places that seem out of the way, so maybe it's normal all over.
On the way out we noticed that they even put decorations on the river of ships and things.
Timeframe: Dec 6, 2008
Welcome to Chenonceaux, the castle of the women. Craig decided that we should visit the Loire Valley to see some castles (although the castle part was my idea). Thanks to his trusty Baedeker and their two star designations we found this wonderful little castle hiding in the country side of France. Thanks to the GPS installed in the car, we actually got there :) This picture is the drive way that leads up to the castle proper. As Craig said, I could live with a drive way like this.
This is the castle itself. The part on the left that looks strange is there because they're doing remodeling on that part of the castle which is really sad because that's the part that has all the flying buttresses coming off it. It's the chapel.
And as we walked up to the castle a balloon came overhead to greet us. Well, he wasn't there to greet us per se, but it was pretty to see it over the river so I took a picture.
Now, while this fire place may look ordinary I want you to take a good close look. See anything... different? That's right, it has a fire inside! Every other historical location I've been to has also had many many fireplaces, but this is the first one I've ever seen that actually has a fire inside it. I've always wondered what these huge fire places would look like with an actual fire in them, but now I know. It actually did a great job of heating the room too.
This is a picture of the ceiling of one of the rooms. I tried to get a close-up of it, but it was just too blurry due to the fact that we weren't allowed to use flash photography. First of all, I thought it looked interesting, but secondly it has the initials CM, Catherine de Medici, the queen of France somewhere in the 1400s. That's why this castle is called the castle of women, because of the two women behind it. First it was built for Henri's wife Catherine, but then Henri decided to give it to his mistress Diana. When Henri died Catherine demanded to have the castle back, trading it for some estate somewhere else in France. She worked the castle so that it actually turned a profit and basically ruled France from her little drawing room here. (Geoff-brother, please correct any history I may be messing up here). Interesting stuff. Who says women weren't powerful in the middle ages? Make sure you read about Anne de Bretagne too (it's in another post, the one about Nantes).
Like all rulers back then, Catherine needed a personal chapel to do her worshiping in. It's actually small compared to other chapels I've seen (like Versailles), but it was very pretty. The windows were especially nice, but currently the chapel is filled to the brim with white Christmas trees so I didn't take a picture of the ground floor. Catherine didn't actually come down to the ground floor for worship anyway (that was for servants). She used her own private door to her balcony which is above and behind us compared to this picture.
The part of the castle you don't really get a good feel for from the front is that not only is it built on a river, but it spans the entire river. Think castle-bridge!
And this is what it looks like on the inside of the castle-bridge. It was used to host balls and parties for important people. The Christmas trees weren't there back then, they were just added due to the fact that it's December. They usually put fresh flowers from the gardens in each room, but I figure that since it's winter, there are no flowers to be had. Catherine was actually going to continue the castle on the other side of the river, but either she died or she ran out of money, I can't remember which. One interesting historical fact is that during WWII from where I'm taking this picture I was in free France, where as at the opposite end of this hall you would have been in Nazi occupied France. 
This is the entrance hall (the door you come in is in the picture). 
And this is a picture of the kitchens. If you notice the arch in the top right corner, that's underneath the bridge part of the castle. They built it this was because it allowed easy access from the river below. They actually brought fresh food down the river and were able to bring it into the kitchen through the windows via a winch.
Just a pretty image of a sitting room used here at Chenonceaux to entertain guests I guess.
A picture out of the front door (I was worried it was going to get too dark before we finished with the rest of the castle).
Here's a picture of the stairwell. Apparently it was the first straight stairwell ever built in France (in the Italian style). Before this all stairwells were circular (I guess).
This is a picture of the castle itself. It gives a much better view of the bridge portion of it.
This is Catherine's garden, which is much smaller than Diana's which is behind us (which I didn't get a picture of actually). But this one has a nice water way all the way around and a much more interesting shape than the Diana's square garden.
And this is the only portion of the castle that was originally here. It turns out that before Chenonceaux there was another castle here, of which this tower was a part. It's now been converted into a bookstore/gift-shop :(
Timeframe: Dec 05, 2008
Well Craig made good on his promise to come visit and we decided to do a little road trip around different parts of Brittany. Our first stop, Mont Saint-Michel! It's amazing how the fortress just pops out of the ground. There's absolutely nothing higher than 10 feet for miles around and so the fortress is easily visible miles and miles away. With the ocean on one side and flat fields on the other it must have been really easy to defend this place.
Here's a picture of the place from the parking lot. The fortress seems huge! Luckily the sign let us know that the tide wouldn't be washing out this parking lot today so we didn't have to walk much to get here. 
Once you get inside the fortress there are actually streets with shops. We even had a nice lunch at one of them. It really amazes me how France - a country known for their food - is really quite fastidious about when you can and can't eat. Almost all the shops stop serving lunch at about 2 or 3 o'clock in the afternoon and won't serve you dinner until 7 pm. There are workers inside the whole time, but if you go in (through the unlocked door) they ask you what you think you're doing here and ask you to leave. Really odd if you ask me.
My impression of the fortress was that the whole thing was going to be one big building, but it turns out that what you mostly see from the outside is the church towering over everything. Another little bit of trivia is that they actually used the whole island as a prison in the late 17 or 1800s (can't remember) housing something like 700,000 prisoners over 100 years. It's the French Alcatraz!
Here's another shot of the streets found all around the cathedral in the middle. It seems very much like a little old European city. Very quaint (albeit a bit more vertical than I'm used to).
Now we finally get to the cathedral itself. As you can see it pretty much towers over everything else. It went through a bunch of different stages of construction with the earliest model we got to see being from the 11th century (basically just the nave - picture later on). But from the audio tour it seems that they were copying manuscripts here as early as 600 AD. We didn't see any of the manuscripts because they're no longer kept here, but instead are in a museum in Avranches (a city nearby).
Here you can see how far up we are. It was funny because Craig kept making comments about Geoff (brother) being afraid of heights and that one time they were climbing up a tower in Switzerland where Geoff was freaking out about the arrow slit windows. I tried to explain to Craig what it's like being afraid of heights (as I am a little scared even while taking this picture), but later on there was a tower where Craig showed me what Geoff had been afraid of. I don't really understand why he freaked out. I mean, higher up the stairs it almost looks like you have a straight shot out of the arrow slit, but you'd never fit through them. Maybe Geoff was way smaller then?
This is the nave of the cathedral that was built in the 11th century.
And this is the cloister. I never thought this is what a cloister was. Considering the verb means to hide oneself I figured that a cloister would be a hidden little room where monks go for penance or something. This was a nice little garden room that seemed very light and airy with a huge window (glassed in now) that over looked the ocean.
This was the knights room. I assume it's where the knights who defended the fortress had their beds. But the audio-guide also talked about the fireplaces in the background as being places for monks to gather and also about making manuscripts. The audio-guide wasn't very clear about the whole thing even after listening to it a few times.
Here's a picture of the shadow Mont Saint-Michel leaves on the surrounding beaches (water when the tide actually comes high enough). I just thought it looked cool.
There are also other islands out in the sound. It's all very pretty on the Brittany coast.
And here's a picture looking back up at the cathedral from the streets down below as we were climbing back down. Very medieval :)
Another interesting thing that I never would have thought of, it seems like there are actually people who live here on the island. As you can see in the picture it looks like there are homes above all the shops. We even saw some furniture in some of the rooms as we passed by.
And the most interesting street we encountered on our trip! I don't know for sure that it was a street since it was so small (Craig got a picture of me struggling to get through it sideways with my backpack off). But, there are two doors (right about where Craig is standing) that open, so someone must use this thing.
And one last picture of the Mont with the sun setting behind us. What a wonderful day!
