Hiking Crozon: Pointe de Pen Hir

Every day in Brittany can’t be sunny, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t go for a hike! We headed out toward the southern tip of the “trident” at the end of the Crozon peninsula and something unexpected appeared… But what caught our attention first: The naval architect may be retired, but ship artifacts will still […]

Mont Saint Michel

Yes, it’s iconic and it’s on everyone’s bucket list… but it wasn’t that great. The views from afar and the slowly increasing size of the mount as you walk across the salt marsh were definitely the best part. If I had it to do over, I would skip the tour of the abbey. Lots of […]

Saint Malo: Ya Gotta Go!

Our friends G&B visited Saint Malo last year and highly recommended it. J’s former French teacher, upon hearing we are in France, said we have to go not just to Saint Malo but specifically to Le Beaufort hotel. (Carol brings small groups over for guided tours of France, so she’s found all kinds of great […]

Hiking Crozon: Cap de la Chèvre

The Crozon peninsula has an embarrassment of great places to hike. Our first expedition was to Cap de la Chèvre (Cape of the Goat). The flowering heather and gorse could be in Cornwall or Scotland…until the next hiker goes by and says “bonjour.” We continue to marvel at the many colors of the water, which […]

More Butter!

What’s better than a birthday gift of a two-night stay at Le Hotel Beaufort facing the sea in Saint Malo? Adding on dinner at the Bistrot Autour du Beurre (the “All About Butter” bistro). No restaurant that starts you off with an eight butter tasting could possibly be bad. The butters are amazing: seaweed, buckwheat, […]

The Sunday Chicken

On Sunday, every open-air market (marché) in France apparently has a chicken rotisserie truck. Our first ever rotisserie chicken in France was several years ago, in Normandy. We still occasionally discuss how awesome it was – moist, juicy, succulent. Even better, we also bought the potatoes that had been roasting in the chicken juices (ok, […]

Ahh, Bretagne

We reached our new rental in Brittany on Sunday. It’s even better than we had hoped. The house looked nice online; it was a very pleasant surprise to find the rooms were larger than they looked in the pictures (when does that ever happen?). J was delighted to find an extremely well-equipped kitchen. (Oddly, it […]

The Planning

We took two years to plan this trip. That was driven by life events, not the amount of work involved, which would probably expand to take as much time as you’re willing to spend. There’s always one more potential rental to look at… and it might be even better than the one you’ve already decided […]

L’Île de Ré

Did we mention that this is J’s favorite place in France? The last week has not changed that one iota. If you like biking, beaches, beautiful countryside, and good food, you really should visit. As we biked along the coast, through vineyards, and past salt marshes and salt pools, we had huge smiles on our […]

Nous Sommes en France!

It’s always good to have a backup plan… We got to the station to take the train to the airport only to see the display change to “More than 1 hour delay”. Uh-oh, time for Plan B. D&D had come with us and we all hopped back in the car and raced (when the traffic […]