Catching Up (We Finally Have Internet Access Again)

Sorry for the long delay in posting, but we have not had internet access in days.  So here is a LONG post about what’s happened in the interim.  From now on I will be using public wi-fi at the Tourist information Office, so I will post every other day instead of every day.  The posts will include only limited links to places as it takes too much time to do them all.  Use Google!  And all photos will not have captions to save me some time.

Remember to click on photos to enlarge them and see detail better!

FRIDAY:

A Day to Forget (Mostly)

Breakfast was fine (as usual), and then I shagged the car from the car park to load it up outside La Maison Pavie.  No problem.  Next we needed to get gas before we headed for our next stop.  That’s where the trouble began.

In the UK diesel pumps at the petrol station are labeled in green.  Unthinkingly and without looking closely, I unwittingly filled the car up from the green labeled pump in Dinan.  WRONG MOVE, JOE!!!  In France the diesel pumps (gazole) are black and the unleaded pumps (essence sans plomb) are green.  Once filled up, I drove off and almost immediately the car started running very rough.

Elaine insisted, quite rightly, that we turn around and go back into Dinan where she had noticed on arrival that there was a Renault dealer.  Why she noticed it will never be known, but it certainly helped to know it was there.  We made it back, barely, and in I went to explain the problem to the English speaking staff.  WRONG AGAIN, JOE!  French only!  I persevered and made the problem known after a big “excusez moi de vous deranger, monsieur, mais j;ai une grande probleme.”  I still didn’t realize I had bought the wrong gas.  At this point the car wouldn’t even start up again.

They towed it into the service bay and after 15 minutes informed me that unleaded gas won’t run a diesel engine.  D’oh.  Within 45 minutes they had pumped out the tank and gave me 10 liters of diesel.  Since my contract with Renault is full coverage for everything, all I had to pay for the 10 liters of gas.  They even washed the car “gratuit”, and off we went to re-fill the tank – with gazole this time.  (I used a different gas station so the attendant wouldn’t know that I was the idiot that I am.)

Then it was on to our intermediate stop, the town of Josselin.  It’s a beautiful city with a high castle located on the Nantes-Brest canal.  It was now 1:00 pm, about three hours later than we had hoped to get here. It was time to search out a spot for lunch.  Brittany is famous for crepes, so we picked the La Marine Creperie where we both had gallettes, buckwheat crepes..  Elaine’s version had blue cheese, pears, walnuts, and salad.  Mine had Camembert cheese, honey, and salad.  Un pichet (25 cl) du vin rouge for Elaine and a 50 cl beer for me.  All very, very good.

Then we walked around the town, taking lots of pictures of the castle, the canal, the quaint streets, and the Notre Dame church.  Castle visits were by guided tour only, in French, an hour long, and the next one wasn’t for a half hour.  Since we were running late, we skipped that.  Josselin would have been a great place for our overnight stop.

Anyway, back to the car and we were off Rochefort-en-Terre, thirty minutes away.  This is a very small town and we found Hotel Le Pelican quickly.  I illegally parked in an alley to register.  NOT SO FAST!!  The hotel seemed totally closed.  Elaine made me move the car to a legal parking lot, and we walked to the tourist office.  The nice lady there called the hotel and then told us it would be open again at 5:00.  OK.  So we did a walkabout of the beautiful little town of Rochefort-en-Terre, accurately noted as a city of flowers.

Back at the Hotel Le Pelican, the exceedingly nice woman at reception said they had no record of our reservation.  OH NO, ANOTHER DISASTER?  No worries, they had a room.  It seemed a pretty basic affair, but “d’accord”, it would do.  So went to the car, got our bags, and returned with my reservation confirmation in hand.  She apologized and said these glitches happened often.  (C’est normale)  She noted from the reservation that I had reserved a nicer room and that too was free, so we moved from room 2 to room 1.  It was significantly better.  And we reserved a table in the restaurant for sept heures et demi (7:30).

Now I had to use my cell phone with an international multi-country sim card to call the contact for our rental house to confirm my arrival time tomorrow.  The cell phone worked flawlessly in the UK.  Not so much in France.  I would dial and the phone would reboot.  Occasionally I would get through and the phone then almost immediately dropped the call.  BAH, WILL ANYTHING GO RIGHT TODAY??  So I wandered out looking for a pay phone.  With the advent of mobile phones, pay phones have almost disappeared in France and this small town had none.  I went into a small restaurant and talked to the guy in charge.  “Excusez moi de vous deranger, monsieur, mais j’ai un petite probleme.”  He let me use his cell phone, and I made the call.  All is arranged finally!

Given the day’s trials and tribulations, we had low expectations for dinner.  Those were unfounded, and dinner was grand in the beautiful hotel dining room.

Elaine:  Terrine de Campagne as a starter.  Medallions of Pork with vegetables as a main course.  Deux boules (two scoops) of sorbet, one strawberry and one prune, with fruit as desert.  High marks for all from Elaine.

Joe:  Nine oysters on the half shell for a starter.  Two lamb sausages, each differently prepared, with fresh vegetables for my main.  And a chocolate and caramel desert.  All wonderful.

Off to bed and a stress filled but ultimately enjoyable day was complete.

SATURDAY

Arrival at Our Manor House

We started with breakfast at Hotel Le Pelican and then loaded up the car for a leisurely journey to Plouezoc’h with some stops planned along the way before our 4:00 pm appointment to take possession of Manoir de Keristin.

First stop was at Carnac to see the Carnac Stones.  Earlier on the trip we saw Stonehenge where the stones are enormous but relatively few in number.  Here the stones are smaller but run on for what seems like a mile or more in long parallel rows in almost perfect alignment.  It is really quite amazing.

Onward toward Plouezoc’h, and we arrived there at about 2:00 pm, too early to meet our contact for the house.  So drove to the coast at Terenez, walked about, took pictures, and killed some time.  It was beautiful there, but it was cloudy and the coast always looks better in the sun.  Then it was time to find our house.

Plouezoc’h is very small.  It has a drug store, a bakery, a small restaurant, and a convenience store.  And our house is down a long dead end road bordered on both sides by corn fields.  (There is corn everywhere in Brittany as well as lots of other crops.)  The directions to find the house were spot on and we pulled in at 3:50 pm.  Shortly thereafter Emmanuelle, the agent for our hosts, Heleny and Phillippe, arrived.  She showed us the house, gave us the key, and she was off.

It’s a big house:  Nicely fitted kitchen, very large family room/dining room, three bathrooms, a glass sun room, a small laundry room (with washer, dryer, and dish washer), and four bedrooms.  But the best thing of all is the huge backyard with an outdoor dining table.

Then we drove to Morlaix, the nearest big town, about 15 minutes away to visit the Intermarché to stock up on necessities.  Amongst other stuff we bougt some chicken breasts and vegetables for tonight’s dinner and wine.  Oh, and very importantly, some ice cube trays to make ice for use with my still unopened vodka from the ferry.  Oh, and we stopped at the little boulangerie in Plouezoc’h (which is fantastic!) and bought un grand siècle (a wheat baguette) and some tartes au citron (lemon tarts).

The bread was to die for.  Dinner and wine and tarts were fine, and we were off to bed after another long day.

SUNDAY

Glorious Weather and Exploration of the Immediate Area

We started the day by driving just up the road a few minutes to a national historic sight, the Barnanez Cairn, an ancient burial site.  The weather was beautiful and sunny, and we met some Americans who we chatted up for awhile.  We have seen very few Americans on this trip save for one morning in Dinan when all the people at breakfast where from the USA.

Then we drove back to Tenerez and enjoyed the coast and the harbor in dazzling sunshine.  The temperature today reached the upper seventies, and I could have, but didn’t, wear my one pair of shorts.  We had a delightful lunch at a restaurant at Tenerez:  gallettes with salmon for Elaine and a delicious cassoulette de le mer (scallops, clams, calamari, mussels, and fished all baked in a wonderful sauce) for me.

Driving on up our little peninsula on the Bay of Morlaix, we discovered the town of Plougasnou and the stunning Pointe de Primel.  We will be back here again soon on another good day for a picnic.

Home again, home again.  I changed into my shorts, and we relaxed in the back yard.  We had ice now, and I had makeshift vodka gimlets.  First vodka since we left Las Vegas!)  No Rose’s lime juice in France, so I had bought two varieties of lime (citron verte) mixers to try.  The first one I tried works just fine.  Dinner was ham & cheese sandwiches made with another delicious grand siècle loaf of bread and a home made salad.  We have beautiful flowers on the outdoor dining table and in the house, all picked from the back yard.

MONDAY

A Drive and a New Phone

Today our goal was the Côte de Granit Rose.  It was another beautiful morning and we drove inland on the autoroute to the furthest point we wanted to see at Paimpol.  But along the way we stopped in Guingamp, a large town to visit a huge Intermarché.  We needed more wine, and I was hopeful I could buy a French sim card for my phone to make it usable again.  They didn’t have one, but Elaine noticed an electronic store nearby.  It was small with only one attendant (who naturally spoke no English).  My French is getting a workout on this trip, but I’ve been doing pretty well at it.  I got an Orange (France’s Verizon) sim card and inserted it in my phone.  Nothing.  The phone has essentially become a brick.  So I bought a new (pay as you go) phone, the Orange sim card, and 60 minutes of air time.  Voila, I now have a working phone.  I also enquired about a mobile hot spot for my computer for internet access, but either we weren’t understanding each other or they didn’t have one.

We stopped for a nice moules-frites (mussels and fries) lunch in Paimpol by the port.  The weather had turned cloudy and foggy, and the coast was dreary and chilly.  We stopped at Pointe de l’Arcouest to look around.  You can take a short ten minute ferry ride from here to the small Ile de Bréhat.  Given the weather we declined, but judging from the parking lot, it’s a popular destination.  Maybe we will be back.

We drove on to Plougrescant to view the little church with steeple balanced at a weird angle.  The church is under heavy restoration (i.e., the ever-present scaffolding that seems to be on every historic site these days), but you can get a good picture of the steeple sans scaffolding.

The weather had cleared and we made another stop at Pors-Hir to see a picturesque little house between two boulders (overrated) and a nice beach.  The next thing to do would have been a circuit of the Corniche Bretonne, but it was getting late, so we decided to save that for tomorrow (or another day) and headed home.

The brilliant boulangerie in town is closed on Monday, but the convenience store was open.  They have a very nice deli-like counter, so we bought two kinds of terrine (terrine forestiere and terrine canard), a loaf of very good bread, and some fruit.  Home for gimlets, wine, and a terrine & fruit salad dinner.  La vie est magnifique.