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> Beautiful Brittany |
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Follow my tracks to … Beautiful Brittany
Follow Bill and his wife Helen on the French roads visiting France with their France Rail Pass.
PARIS MONTPARNASSE - LA BAULE
Some early marketing genius started calling the area around La Baule the “Cote d’Amour.” Helen rebels against marketing, so I didn’t tell her about the Love Coast nickname when we planned our break in Brittany. Three hours by TGV brought us the cute station of La Baule Escoublac. It was built in the 1920s to replace an earlier station, and its tall roofs, bay windows and stone work have all the enthusiasm of that decade. Between the pretty beach and the pretty town is a long wall of white apartment buildings. Helen thinks they are well done. I prefer the back streets, but we were here for love and relaxation, not debate. And as it was a romantic get-away, we chose one of those villas with character that she found on the tourist office’s web site. The five-mile long beach is said to be the longest in Europe. The ocean on the west coast of France can be chilly, but the sun warms this shallow bay. We swam, ate at the oldest beach-side restaurant and watched the sun go down. La Baule has had thalasso spas for more than 100 years, and there are two nice places here, but we opted for some unique tourism the next day: a boat ride in a chaland on a big inland marsh called La Briere. It was something like a punt, with the guide pushing a long pole against the bottom to snake us through the rushes. Our cab driver proposed a visit to the walled city of Guerande on the way back. We bought a bag of sea salt there that people scrape from salt marshes, and we were driven through the marshes on the way back to La Baule. We spent a few minutes watching a skateboard competition in town the next day before picking out our spot on the sand. Helen had booked a massage for the late afternoon at one of the spas, and I walked the back streets taking pictures of the seaside architecture of days gone by.
NOT TO BE MISSED
France Rail Pass’partner:
Our next stop was in the middle of Brittany. From the busy train station in Rennes we took the subway to Republic, near the Cathedral Saint-Pierre de Rennes and our hotel. Rennes is the capital of Brittany, which is proud of its Celtic heritage and the culture that grew up around making a living in a hard land. One effect of this pride is a “Made in Brittany” tradition of local artisans and entrepreneurs. In much of this world you have to buy honey if you want a local product. But here in the tourism office we found a boutique devoted to local production, everything from embroidered table linen to a crepe plate that looks like it has a crepe on it already. Helen bought a scarf for her sister. The tourism offices in France are one-stop sources of local information, what’s going on, where to stay, what to do. Almost always someone speaks pretty good English. Here they offered many guided visits of the town center and historic Parliament, and you could rent a Segway to roll around the city streets. But when I learned about Urbavag, where I could rent an electric boat and tour the town on its canals and river, I gave Helen my inviting “what do you think” look, and she nodded, and we went boating. We tended to look around at the architecture and not dwell on historic details. We booked tickets for a concert the next night, after a day of relaxing and shopping. The Lisse street market is the second largest in all of France, and besides all the usual things there were many local artisans and artists.
NOT TO BE MISSED
France Rail Pass’partner: - Restaurant and hotel le Coq gaby - Rennes golf course
RENNES - SAINT MALO
I could spend a week or a month in St. Malo. I’d like to arrive here by ferry one day, and see the town’s ramparts appear as they did to the eyes of returning corsairs – the sailors in the private navy that the English would have called pirates – who fought for treasure and for France from the Middle Ages until the 19th Century. It’s a romantic place for a guy who grew up reading sea stories. St. Malo was given “rights of asylum” in 1144, which attracted an unsavory crowd running from the law, good material for sailors willing to risk their lives for a share of the booty. There is a lovely statue in town of Robert Surcouf, a clever corsair during Napoleon’s time who sailed small fast ships and won battles with larger British warships using tactics like disguising his ship as a fishing boat until it was too close for the enemy to fire cannons. The story is told that a British officer once told him, “You French fight for money, while we British fight for honor." He answered, “Sir, a man fights for what he lacks the most." Today, the Casino Barriere in St. Malo is a fine place to stir up some adrenalin, while the old walled city is a fine place to stir up the imagination. Helen and I walked the ramparts and visited the Maison de Corsaire, museum that was the home of a successful corsair and today hosts re-creations of swashbuckling corsair days. St. Malo is a masculine town, but there is a popular thalasso therapy spa and the Grand Aquarium and a selection of art galleries for those who don’t have any pirate blood in their veins. The train station is new, built in 2005 when the TGV from Paris arrived. We arrived there, and all too soon had to leave for the fast trip back to Paris. I could spend a week or a month in St. Malo. NOT TO BE MISSED
SAINT MALO - PARIS MONTPARNASSE
* (2011 frequency) |
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| Last Updated on Tuesday, 06 December 2011 15:34 |
2H58 by TGV
4 trains per day*
