Rostrenen, Bretagne

Brittany is like the Pacific Northwest of France. Or more literally, it is the Atlantic Northwest.  When Nick told his coworkers that we were planning on vacationing in Brittany, they were a little dumbfounded.  Why would you head to the rainiest, wettest place in France when you could go down to the gloriously sunny, warm beaches on the Mediterranean?

To start with, those beaches become absolutely infested with tourists of all make and model during August.  August is the holiday month in both Britain and France; Paris clears out, as do many other northern cities and prices and populations skyrocket in all the southern resort cities.  Being the antisocial cheapskates that we are, that wasn't particularly to our tastes.  In addition after a month in the heart of Paris, we were reading for some peace and quiet.  So here we are.

The plan was to take a train out of Paris on Sunday morning, headed for the city of Rennes, the capital city of Brittany (I believe, but can't currently be bothered to look it up).  From there we intended to take a bus to the small airport, rent a car and be on our merry way, but Sunday night we discovered a possible kink in our plan.  We weren't originally planning on renting or driving any cars when we got here, so we didn't do any research into the matter and promptly forgot it existed.  While planning for this trip, we decided that it would be worth the splurge on the rental car to be able to get to the out of the way corners of Brittany and to really get some peace and quiet without depending on buses that (hopefully) run only once a day or (more likely) don't exist at all.  It wasn't until Nick had reserved the car and we had made our B&B reservations in a tiny town that is mostly inaccessible by public transport that he read the full rental agreement which said that they require an International Driver's Permit.  Suddenly, it seemed like some rather poor planning on our part was going to cause some problems.

We soldiered on, went through with our plans, under the belief that many much more ignorant and clueless tourists than us rent cars all the time, so hopefully, it was something that wasn't as "required," as the rental agreement made it sound.  We did have some time to kill in the train station in Rennes and did all we could to look up ways to get where we were going by bus or train and that seemed to no avail, making the anxiety even higher than it had been.  I told Nick when we finally ended up at the airport that I hoped it all worked out because my optimism muscles, being frequently out of use and permitted to atrophy, were quite exhausted.

Luckily, we got the car just fine, with nary a mention of the IDP and navigated ourselves out to the tiny town of Rostrenen with little incident.  We have discovered that roundabouts are indeed a foreigner's friend.  Miss your exit?  Just go around one more time, no worries.

The B&B or Chambres d'Hotes, as they're called in French, is lovely and owned by a very friendly British couple.  We tried Marmite at breakfast our first morning; with strong flavor comes great responsibility, but if one doesn't abuse their privileges, it's actually rather tasty.  Reminds me strongly of miso paste.

Yesterday we went out exploring in a local national park.  We got excellent views of the western most tip of Brittany, a region called Finistere.  According to patrons of one of the Lonely Planet travel forums, Finistere translates into "the end of the world" in French but "the beginning of the world" in Breton.  Rather apropos.

Here are some views from the top of the end of the world:

Nick and I aren't really sure what the Parisians are on about regarding the bad weather.  In the two days we've been out here, the weather has been more consistently nice and comfortable than most of the month prior in Paris.  The above photos were taken at Roch Trevezel; a local high point from which you can see out pretty near to the coastline.  Yesterday the wind was blowing with a vengeance.  If you faced into it, it came at you with such force it was almost difficult to breathe.  We spent an hour and a half walking trails down below, though, and the weather was very pleasant with just a nice breeze.

Our hostess was going on about how incredibly high the rock was.  We tried not smirk.   Flatlanders and islanders, what can you do with them?  Gorgeous view and area, all the same.

That's all for now, I not even going to bother editing.  We're going to go have a picnic of sausage, crepes and antipasti that we picked up in the town market for lunch and then head out for a hike of the Rostrenen area.  I'll try and get a few more photos up later in the day.  I s'pose I may come back eventually...but it really is beautiful out here so I may need some persuasion.

Ta!