March is Visitors' Month

This post is written jointly, just for your information and, of course, reading pleasure.

David and Lily in the rain at Fougères.

David, learning all about the history
of Fougères through the children's
information sites.

Much of March was spent hosting visitors, whom we were very grateful to have. First, Lisa's brother David and his girlfriend Lily came for about four days (plus another two and a half in Paris). We showed them around Cesson-Sévigné and Lisa took them to Fougères. This time, the castle was open and they got to go in, but it was cold and horribly rainy! Lily and David also went on their own to Mont-Saint-Michel one day (it helped that Lily speaks French!). It was very nice to have them here and to show them a little bit of Brittany. We made them the traditional dinner of cider, galettes, salad, a cheese course, soup, and baked apples, and by the end we all had eaten too much!  After their days here, Lily and David went to Paris for a few days where they enjoyed picnics in the park and art museums as well as venturing up the Eiffel tower.  It was good to have family time even if that involved what was sadly typical weather.

Fougères intramuros and seen from across the moat.

The next week, my (Aaron writing here) cousin Sarah came and stayed for about ten days. She did an awful lot on her own, too, largely because Lisa and I had to work (obviously) and couldn't accompany her everywhere. She went to Mont-Saint-Michel by herself as well as the Paimpont Forest west of Rennes which is supposed to be the legendary forest of Brocéliande where Merlin is buried. Lisa took her to Vitré one day and I went with her to Fougères so that I, too, could see the castle and the little late medieval church next to it. It was a pretty impressive site and still mostly intact. We also visited a more recent church, St. Leonard, in the upper town which was nice, too. As Sarah said, she was on the "church tour of France" while she was here!

Rennes cathedral, interior.

Saint Amand.  Sarah wanted to know why he was giving
us the finger.

Lisa and I also did a couple things with Sarah in Rennes that we hadn't done before. We went to the cathedral here which is a 19th-century construction done more in an Italian basilica style than a French Gothic style. It's a beautiful space and we also got to see the tomb of one of the first bishops of Rennes, from the sixth century. That week, Andrew (our friend/colleague/son), invited us over for a dinner of traditional galettes and lots of conviviality.  He is a delightful host, and it was a good way to spend time together and to introduce Sarah to French cuisine.

Parliament of Brétagne.

Original entrance hall, Parliament.

The next week, we all took a tour of the Parliament of Brittany building. It was built in the 17th century to house the court of appeals for Brittany as well as offices for tax assessors (the regional court of appeals still meets there). In 1994, the building caught on fire as part of a strike and had to be largely restored and rebuilt. On the tour, we only saw five or six rooms, but they're all decorated with ornate wall and ceiling paintings and one has several tapestries (which we were created after the fire based on the original designs). It's a great building and I'm glad we did the tour, although it was all in French, so Sarah didn't understand any of it and I only understood parts of it! The guide barely took a breath, so there wasn't much time for Lisa to translate. We also had a very strange young man on the tour. When we entered the parliament building, we had to empty our pockets and go through a metal detector. He had TONS of stuff in his pockets and it was all odd things, like a tennis ball, some rope, and a few books. He also consistently lagged behind the rest of the tour, being the last one out of a room as we walked and he even pulled out a newspaper to read during one stop on the tour. We were vaguely concerned that he was looking to case the building for some not-so-peaceful purpose. It was very strange.

Ceiling, Parliament.

Modern furniture in an old-fashioned room, Parliament.

Aaron with window from Chartres for scale.

On the weekend, we went back to Chartres and this time we got to see the stained glass museum, which turned out to be about a lot of windows and a very out-of-date exhibit in the basement that was supposed to stop running two years before.  It was still interesting and gave us the chance to see reproductions of the Chartres windows that were too high to be accurately read from inside the sanctuary.  Our hotel was very cool, as it was an old monastery and had a book sale, where we over-indulged on Old French and Latin books.  It seemed like all the octogenarians had emptied out their shelves for this sale, and we were grateful!  The other cool thing about the hotel was that the year prior, an American group of pilgrims had built a labyrinth out back to mimic the one that was inside the church and which is almost always covered with chairs.  We got to end our visit there with a nice walk through that.

Sarah and Aaron in the labyrinth at our hotel.

Crypt, Notre Dame de la Couture.

Notre Dame de la Couture,
Le Mans.

On the return trip, we had a long enough layover in Le Mans that we finally got to see a bit of that city where we've spent collective hours, but only minutes at a time.  The church we visited was actually quite beautiful, with no aisles.  It felt very open as a result.  We ran into the sexton and complimented him on the church, at which point he offered to light up the crypt for us, which was very old, much older than we expected.  We can now officially say we've been to Le Mans!

Stay tuned for Sarah and Lisa's Visit to Paris.

Bonus Picture: Sarah and Lisa's favorite moment from the Parliament tour.
Dog Sees Pigeon, Boy sees Dog, Mom sees Boy.  On your mark, get set, go!