The end of an era.

Well, it's pretty much over.  I head out of Paris and back to the land of coffee shops and indie punk music tomorrow morning around eleven. 

Brittany was absolutely lovely and Nick and I now have another possible location for retirement (in about ten years) but by the end of the trip, life started throwing some curve balls.  I woke up Thursday morning, feeling groggy and crabby, but tried to tough it out.  After breakfast, I decided that I needed a nap.  We were planning to stay fairly local, so we decided to take a lazy morning and do our stuff in the afternoon.  About twenty minutes before laying down, we got word from the roommate that our apartment in Seattle had been robbed the night before.  Sounds like it wasn't too terrible.  She was out of the house and obviously, most of our important things are with us right now.  They made a mess of things and took her computer, but sounds like all the other major electronics were not worth their time.  Once we determined that she was okay and that the earth would continue to sit comfortably on its axis without our interference, I finally got that nap in.

Three odd hours later, I woke up and it soon became very clear that I was developing a high fever and what turned out to be some sort of flu.  I spent the night in what I will succinctly describe merely as absolute misery, before we made the very long and equally miserable trip "home" to Paris.  I'm slowly inching towards recovery, but definitely not back at 100% yet and I'm dreading the flight tomorrow.

It was unfortunate that our trip to Brittany ended on such low notes because all the rest of it was amazing.  The weather was beautiful and our hosts were great.  We stayed with a very nice English couple. After two nights staying up and chatting until eleven or midnight it really felt like we had made great new friends.  

I'm too tired now to keep up to my usually verbose standards.  I'll just upload some pictures and let them all speak for themselves.  That's what you really want anyway.

Megaliths at Carnac (aka really old rocks)

Lovely little shopping bag/basket we picked up at market day in Rostrenen.

Market day in Rostrenen

Mmmm...

Bread!

This is the largest pan of paella that I've ever seen.  Not just a tricky camera angle.

Market day in Rostrenen

Abandoned abbey on Montagne St. Michel

Pretty little flowers growing in the heather.

Pretty view in Carnac where we stopped to picnic 

Picnic lunch in Carnac: fresh bread, salmon rillette, purple potato chips, fruit, beer and water.

 For this one, we were about two and half odd hours into a ramble around Rostrenen.  We'd been up hills, down valleys, through creeks, over bridges, in the heat and the sun, with a pathetically small water bottle between us (poor planning on our part).  I said that I must look disheveled or some more impressively descriptive adjective that I don't now remember.  He replied that that was only how I felt as I couldn't have any idea how I looked.  I promptly pulled out the camera to prove him wrong.

Rambling around Rostrenen

Rambling around Rostrenen

Canal du Nantes on our Ramble

Happy cows come from Rostrenen, not California.

More happy cows

I always pictured Ithilien something like this.

French highways look very like American.  Just make sure to yield to your right.

Concentrating really hard on the road :-P

On the train out to Brittany.  (Not sick and irritable on the way back.)