Paris: Basilica of Saint Denis

Anne de Bretagne's tomb (with husband Louis XII).

Saturday, May 5, Aaron and I took a train to Paris. The ultimate goal: spend a weekend in Versailles with Jean-Claude (the cousin of both my host-mother in Normandy and my college French teacher) and his fiancée Corinne (congratulations on getting engaged!). First, though, we spent a little time in Paris as Jean-Claude and Corinne had a fitness class in the early afternoon. So Aaron and I took the Metro from Montparnasse (the Paris train station that serves trains coming from western France, i.e., Rennes) to the northern suburb of Saint-Denis. The main attraction in Saint-Denis is the cathedral/basilica where 43 kings of France are buried (plus many queens, royal children, princes, and generals). All but three French kings are buried here, although many of them were exhumed and placed at Saint-Denis long after their death and burial. We were warned by several people that the town itself is pretty rough and dangerous, but it seemed fine from what little we saw. Admittedly, we were there in the middle of the day and the Metro stop is very close to the basilica, so we didn't spend any time wandering the streets.

Anne de Bretagne's transi.

Just part of the gift shop inside the basilica. You can't
really tell, but the whole shop seemed like something
out of New Orleans in a movie.

Anyway, the basilica of Saint-Denis originally dates from the 5th century AD and is dedicated to Saint Denis, the patron saint of France. It became part of a monastery in the 7th century and the church that's there now was built in the 12th century in a grand Gothic style, but unlike other churches we've seen, there's no choir screen and there are no walls between the chapels that surround the front of the church, meaning that light flows into the church unobstructed, making it one of the brightest medieval churches we've been in. We're not sure why Saint-Denis was chosen as the burial site for French kings - if anyone out there knows, help us out and tell us in the comments section! A lot of the tombs are pretty elaborate, especially Louis XII and Anne of Brittany's and Henri II and Catherine de Medici's. In fact, the main reason we went was because I saw a post card way back when during our visit to Nantes that showed the transi of Anne de Bretagne and said I HAD to see that in person. What's a transi? Well, kind of weird. It's part of a tomb (really a big sculptural monument under which someone may or may not be buried). This part of the tomb shows the person's body naked as it is decomposing. The monument also usually includes a sculpture representing the living person in a more prominent and visible spot. Unfortunately, you can't usually get very close to the transis to see them all that well, but I definitely thought the trip was worthwhile.

Some tombs and an example of the light inside the
basilica. Bishop Suger wanted the place to be very
bright, and he succeeded!

Back to the basilica itself. Most of the kings buried there, though, are just scattered bones re-collected after the despoliation of the royal tombs during the French Revolution and buried in the crypt in a big vault. Also in the crypt, you can see the remains of the original 4th-century AD Christian burial ground which I found interesting - Aaron loves REALLY old stuff like that, so it was a good trip for him, too!

Stay tuned for our trip to Versailles with Jean-Claude and Corinne!

A Family and Gourmet Weekend in Vitré

Nota bene: This is a long entry with almost no pictures because we neglected to take any during this trip.  Be prepared for lots of food description.

After Laura left us, we spent the afternoon doing laundry and preparing to visit friends in a neighboring town.  I met Adriana in one of my classes at the university, and she asked me to tutor her children in English all year.  Andreea and Ramona are two adorable little girls who amazingly talented at languages.  They speak Romanian, French, AND English.  My current challenge with Andreea is reading, and she has made lots of progress already.

Adriana and her husband Dan invited us for dinner, and we've been trying to find a date all year that would work for all of us.  They then invited us to spend the night because we take the train out there, and it is very limited in the evening.

Our weekend began by introducing Aaron to Dan and the girls, and the girls were VERY excited to have company for whom to perform.  They had lots of energy and entertained us for a while before being sent upstairs to amuse each other.  We then spent a bit of adult time chatting and having Aaron get to know the family with whom I've spent most Wednesday and Friday evenings.  Dan is a doctor and educated us a bit on the removal of stomachs and how the body can cope afterwards.  I for one was very fascinated.

After chatting and tasting a special Romanian drink, we sat down to a traditional dinner, with everything homemade and delicious.  We started off with bread and three vegetable dishes (forgive me if I'm forgetting anything!): green beans in homemade egg mayonnaise, celery root in homemade egg mayonnaise, and garlicky potatoes with olives.  Mmmm.  Adriana explained that homemade mayonnaise is made with one hard-boiled egg yolk and one raw egg-yolk, plus oil and some seasoning.  It puts Helman's to shame!

For our second course, the meat-eaters had chicken (which was something like schnitzel), and we all had fried potatoes that were partially boiled and then cooked in spices and oil.  They reminded me of a vegetarian version of my grandmother's bacon-fat potatoes, which, though I am a vegetarian, might still have the power to convert me for just one tempting moment!  I was glad to know a vegetarian version (including some special Romanian spice mix) could compare!  To top it all off, Dan made a garlic sauce to put on top of everything.  He normally likes to make it with yoghurt, but he used cream this time, and either way, I think it must always be delicious.  It was spicy with the heat of the garlic and reminded us of sauces we've had at Turkish restaurants.  It was at that point that we realized there was a lot of Turkish influence on Romanian food.

Dessert time came, but we all thought we might explode if we continued to eat, so we took a break to watch a movie--The Day After Tomorrow.  It was very dramatic and supplied ample entertainment before we had Adriana's apple cake with homemade whipped cream frosting.  It was very good--flavorful but not overwhelmingly sweet.  Now, because I took my camera but neglected to take any pictures, you have no pictures of our actual time there in this entry, but we are providing you with a few pictures of Romanian food that we learned about.  When I was tutoring one afternoon, delightful smells of dough and cinnamon were pouring from the kitchen, and Andreea and I looked at each other in the middle of our lesson to say at the same time, "Oh, that smells so good!"  Andreea's great-aunt was there and had made what she called a "tarte" of apples but was really much more perfect than that.

Romanian Apple Pie.

I couldn't leave without knowing the recipe, so we realized that we could communicate with what we both knew in Italian (I don't know Romanian, and she didn't know English or French).  The dough is made with yeast, equal parts milk and water, and flour.  You make a firm but moist dough and knead it until it's smooth.  You let that rise.  For the inside, you grate apples and put a bit of sugar and cinnamon on them and let them drain.  This produces a sort of juice.  It did take a while before I was able to understand what to do with this juice--in the end, she brought me the cup and said, "Por Dan!  Yum!" Ah!  Now I understood.  Then, you put the apple mixture on a round of dough and twist the dough up to seal it in, making a dumpling-like object that you put in the oven to bake and become perfection.  Oh so delightful.

My attempt at garlicky tomatoes.

After the movie and more discussion of various cuisines, we went to sleep, listening to the incessant rain that graced us with its presence that weekend.  When we woke up the next morning, we learned about the glory of Romanian breakfast.  Aaron enjoyed a steak covered in butter, and Dan shared his special salad with me.  This consisted of grinding garlic with olive oil and tossing it with salt and cucumbers and tomatoes.  You then eat it with bread and let the juices soak into all the dough.  When you do this, you have the sweetness of the bread, still crunchy on the outside, then mixed with the tartness of tomatoes, spice of garlic, mellow coldness of cucumber, and the touch of sea salt.  Divine.  I think Dan was a little worried he found a worthy opponent to enjoying such a salad.  He let me have the last of the garlicky olivey tomatoey cucumbery liquid for my last piece of bread.  That was a true act of generosity.  I have been making an attempt to imitate this for my lunch every day this week.  I can't wait to have a mortar and pestle again so I can crush instead of chop the garlic!

We spent the afternoon digesting and watching some more movies: Mission to Mars and Runaway Jury.  This basically doubled the number of movies we watched this year.  It was good to have some American cinema education on foreign soil.  We played with the girls and chatted a bit more until it was time to catch our train.  Overall, it was very relaxing, and it was nice to spend time with a family and get to know them better.  We look forward to many years of friendship!

Our Week with Laura: Part Two

Lisa and Laura on the ramparts of Dinan.

We arrived back from Paris in the early evening and made dinner.  We needed to be up early the next day for our day-trip to Dinan, Dinard, and Saint-Malo.  We left bright and early for the county bus and headed on our way.  Laura, like Chris and us, liked Dinan a lot, enjoying its charm and its views.  We were even graced with some sunshine!

How to play dress-up
in Dinan.

We went first to the market (sans hurdy gurdy player this time) where Laura and I continued our tradition of buying scarves--mine in blue and hers in muted pinks.  I think some things will never change, and I'm okay with that!  Aaron (continuing his tradition of buying books in Dinan) found a new travel journal just in time for our next adventure.  We also took Laura past the medieval clothing shop because she and I have always enjoyed a good costume.

The beach at Dinard.

After a picnic lunch in the park behind the oldest church there, we hopped on the bus to Dinard where we got to walk on the beach a bit and see the Hitchcock statue.  We only had a short time there because another bus left for our final destination of Saint-Malo.  Aaron had been there twice, but I had only visited once and had wanted to go back all year.

Laura in the stained-glass rainbows.

Rose window in the cathedral.

I love the stained glass in the cathedral there.  As I think we told you way back in September, all (or at least almost all) of the glass was destroyed in World War II, so it has been replaced recently.  It's rather modern and is just abstract shapes instead of trying to tell stories that are depicted too small to really see.  The light ends up in little rainbow puddles on the floor, and it seems like a lot of life could be there.

While in Saint-Malo, we made Laura try a Kouign-Aman, a butter, flour, egg, and sugar pastry that contains so much butter, the locals even make post cards making fun of it!  We split one among the three of us because the first time Aaron and I found that it was too rich for just two people to share.  We each had a couple of bites, which was the right amount.

Laura at Saint-Malo enjoying the only other sunlight
observed during her trip.

We walked up to the ramparts and had a good view of Dinard and the Channel before walking down to the beach to collect some seashells.  Because it was low-tide, we thought about walking out to Chateaubriand's tomb, but we realized it was farther than it first looked.  It was so nice to have some sunshine that we stayed on the beach until it was almost time to leave for the bus back home.

Constance, Thomas, and Aaron's whipped cream.

The next day, we decided to relax a bit and stay closer to home.  We headed back into downtown Rennes to do some shopping and meet Thomas and Constance for a drink.  Constance had a bit of a cold, but we still had a nice time.  They took us to the Haricot Rouge, which sells milkshakes.  Well, Constance carries extra straws in her bag, so we all got to taste.  It was not a milkshake.  It was milk with flavored syrup stirred in, no ice cream at all.  Still, she adored it, and so that was very good.  Aaron ordered hot chocolate viennois which means that it's covered in whipped cream.  As you can see in the picture, it was!  After we finished our drinks, they took us around to some of the sites, where people were already drunk at 6pm!  That's another thing the locals mock on post cards here.

After that, it was back home for dinner and packing.  We ended the meal with a collection of nine different flavors of macaroons, which we quickly devoured.  They were very delicious.  Saturday morning, we took Laura on a very rushed trip to the market because we couldn't let her leave France without seeing it at its very best.  She got some honey from the honey man who has the best voice I have ever heard!  If I ever manage to get a recording of it, you will have a sound clip here!  We saw Laura off for a sad good-bye at the train station, but we look forward to seeing her again soon in the States!

Laura, sporting her new scarf while
attacking the macaroon collection.

Macaroon siege continues.

Macaroons conquered.

Paris with Laura: Day Two

Medieval Louvre.

Our second day in Paris started by going to the Louvre. Because we hadn't bought the Museum Pass this time, we had to wait in the "normal" security line and it took about 45 minutes to an hour to get in. Fortunately, we used the underground entrance so we didn't have to stand outside in the rain! Once inside, we started with the sections on the "medieval" Louvre. The Louvre was originally built by King Philip II Augustus in about 1190 as a fortress but later became a royal residence until Louis XIV moved the court to Versailles in 1678. Part of the foundations of the medieval Louvre still exist in the basement of the museum and that's what we went to see.

Laura in front of the pyramid.

We also decided to pay extra to see the special exhibit on Leonardo da Vinci's last major work, Saint Anne. (We couldn't take pictures, so here's the Wikipedia picture of it.) It was a very cool exhibit, with lots of Leonardo's sketches for the work, later copies of the painting by his students, and original letters and inventory books dealing with the composition and later ownership of the work. After that, the three of us split up to spend a little time seeing what we wanted to. I raced up to the Mona Lisa room just to be able to say I've seen it. I got a glimpse of it across the room and over the heads of hundreds of people who were all jostling each other trying to see it. I thought I wanted to see more of the Italian Renaissance rooms, but after the da Vinci exhibit, I was Renaissance-d out. It didn't help that it was all so crowded, too. So I met up with Lisa and Laura, we got lunch at a cafe in the basement of the Louvre (after another long wait in line), and ate our sandwiches while walking across the river to the Musee d'Orsay.


We waited in line (again) but spent about two hours inside the museum. I saw some different stuff than last time, like some of the early 19th-century Symbolist works; a display on the construction of Paris' opera house in the 1870s, and some mid-19th-century architectural drawings inspired by contemporary Egypt. To be honest, though, I was a little tired of art so I spent a lot of time sitting in the main court decompressing! Eventually, we all met up, took the Metro to the train station, and left for Rennes around 5 o'clock.

Paris with Laura: Day One

Laura in the Luxembourg Gardens.

In the middle of her week with us, we went with Laura into Paris for the better part of two days. We took a morning train from Rennes, arriving in Paris around 11. Because it looked rather rainy outside, we decided to eat our picnic lunch inside the train station and then we headed by Metro and by foot to the Luxembourg Gardens. Fortunately, it wasn't raining there so we could enjoy being outside. The gardens are located behind the Luxembourg Palace, built in the 17th century for the mother of King Louis XIII, but now housing the French Senate. The gardens are the second-largest park in Paris and they contain numerous fountains, pools, and statuary. It's also famous as a location for Parisian children to sail model boats (we didn't see any when we were there) and it has a puppet theater, too (no shows were on while we were there).

Saint-Sulpice Church.

After walking through the gardens, we headed to the church of Saint-Sulpice, a large 17th- and 18th-century church. It was very stark inside, with lots of plain grey stone which (for some reason) reminded me a 19th-century train station. The church was featured in the book and the movie of The Da Vinci Code, in which Dan Brown makes all kinds of ridiculous and historically inaccurate claims about it. In fact, there's even a small sign in one corner of the church which alludes to "a recent best-selling novel" and corrects the mistakes that novel made about the church. (I've never read the book or seen the movie so I had no idea about any of this until I read the sign informing me about all this!)

We continued up the street looking for the market of Saint-Germain, which turned out to be a big covered mall with a Gap store in it, not the open-air market Lisa expected to find based on her reading of medieval literature! Fortunately, all was not lost because we walked over the church of Saint-Germain-des-Pres (although on the way there, the sky opened up and we got drenched). Saint-Germain-des-Pres was originally a monastery founded in the sixth century and broken up following the French Revolution. The 12th- to 13th-century church still stands and is used as a parish church. The interior is almost entirely painted in greens and blues and probably gives one a good idea of what a medieval church would have been like.

The Thinker by Rodin.

We then took the Metro to our hotel, way up on the north side of the city and, while far from the city center, directly above a Metro stop. After dropping off our bags, we headed back out to the Rodin Museum. It's undergoing renovations right now so not everything was on display, but all the major works, like The Thinker, were out. I was surprised to learn that The Thinker was originally part of a much larger work, The Gates of Hell, based on Dante's Inferno and The Thinker was supposed to represent Dante himself. Then again, I don't know much about Rodin's work, so I shouldn't be that surprised, I guess. Unfortunately, we thought we couldn't take pictures inside the museum, so we can only show you the gardens outside, which we got kicked out of at 6 when the museum closed.

The Gates of Hell by Rodin.

While waiting in line to get in to the museum, two pairs of Americans behind us in line struck up a conversation. Two were middle-aged women from Texas and the other two were newlyweds from Chicago on their honeymoon. They were rather annoying, playing the kind one-upsmanship game that the woman we met in the Tuileries with Chris played: "Have you been to this site? No? Oh, we did, and it's fantastic!" I'm not sure if I found them annoying because I'm not used to dealing with Americans in France or if I would find them annoying if I met them on the street in the US!

Anyway, after Rodin, we went back to Notre-Dame. There was a mass going on inside, so we didn't walk around much, just stood and watched the mass. As soon as it was over, the cathedral closed and they were serious about getting everyone out - they started turning off the lights on us!

Us with Paris in the background.

Following that, we took the Metro to the Montmartre neighborhood (famous, among other things, as being the home of the Moulin Rouge) and had dinner a nice little restaurant. We left around 9:30, threaded our way through pushy street vendors, and climbed all the way up the hill (lots of steps - more than the hills of Rome!) to see Sacre-Coeur.

Sacré-Coeur.

Sacre-Coeur is a Catholic basilica built, with state funding, between 1875 and 1914 as a monument to national unity following the French defeat by the Germans in the Franco-Prussian War but, more importantly, as a kind of national penance for the killing of thousands of French citizens during the Paris Commune uprising of 1870-1871. Many of the communards were trapped in old gypsum mines in the hill of Montmartre and killed by French government forces. In retaliation, the communards killed many of the hostages they held, including the Archbishop of Paris. The basilica is a huge neo-Byzantine domed building and no pictures are allowed inside. There was a mass going on when we there and it was by far the quietest church I've been in here in France. There are some big mosaics on the ceiling, but really what stands out for me is the strangeness of the architectural plan - all squares and domes and half-domes, with few of the long straight lines of Gothic cathedrals.

Mass finished at 10:30 and they closed the church so after getting a few pictures of Paris at night from the top of Montmartre, we climbed down the stairs (much easier than going up!) to the Metro, the hotel, and bed.

Bonus picture: Fight Club Jesus.

Our Week with Laura: Part One

A lost boot in the Rennes cathedral. The sexton did not
look pleased when I handed it to him.

Less than two days after Chris left, Laura arrived, so we didn't have much time to start missing American company!  We went to the market, bought food for the week, and then met Laura at the train station.  We came back to the apartment for our traditional baguette sandwich lunch, which allowed Laura to get over the transatlantic flight in a much more relaxing way than jumping head-first into Paris's best.  She had brought two pounds of jelly beans and some Reese's cups, and we dug in.  It rained most of the day, so we didn't do very much.  We cooked a traditional galette dinner so that Laura could know what our regional food was like and then went to sleep to prepare for Sunday sight-seeing.

Tulips at Thabor.

Abbey church by the Thabor Gardens.

Sunday, we ventured out into our very wet city and saw the major churches, educating Laura about the different architecture and time periods.  We went to the abbey church in front of it, which seemed to be a residence for homeless people, based on the man inside as well as the odor of the place.  We also went to the Thabor Gardens themselves, which are absolutely gorgeous and where a presidential polling station was very active.  Laura educated us about some electoral information since she works for and international electoral company and took lots of pictures of the process.  It was very good for us because otherwise we might have missed out entirely on the local election process.

Watching election results come in.

That evening, we went back into the city to Town Hall to watch the election results come in.  It was another local experience that also gave us the opportunity to see inside one of the city's great buildings.  We should have arrived a bit earlier to see if there would be more of a crowd, but still, it was very interesting to see the percentages come in and watch the people react a bit to them.

Some of the only blue sky Laura saw in France.

Monday I took Laura to Mont-St.-Michel, which was my fifth time there.  It was quite nice because it actually didn't rain there the entire time.  We visited some of the shops and made a thorough tour of the frigid abbey before eating our picnic lunch while watching the hoards of tourists arrive to storm the castle.  We were glad we got there early!  We didn't stay the whole day because we wanted to get back to see the opera highlights of Mozart's Don Giovanni in Rennes before English Club.  

A view of the opera house in Rennes.

The opera was all sold out, and Aaron was especially disappointed, but the woman at the desk said someone might come in with extra tickets.  A very nice lady came in with exactly three extra tickets, and she worked for some sort of organization that couldn't accept money.  We were able to enjoy the opera, and the tickets were a gift!  It was very good, and the space inside was also very pretty.  The other funny event was that two non-French girls beside me were in very intense concentration throughout the opera.  During one break though, one of them nudged me and asked if I was French.  I said no, American.  She said, "Well, I just can't understand anything they're singing!  Is it French or what?"  So I then explained that no, it was in fact in Italian.  I'm not sure she enjoyed the opera any more than before, but she was happy to know she wasn't crazy.

Aaron and Estelle at English Club.

We then went on to English Club where Laura got to meet Estelle, my friend who practices her English with me and with whom I get to practice my French.  We had a very good time discussing language, idioms, and other cultural information.  We didn't stay too terribly long, though, because we had to leave early for Paris Tuesday morning!

Aaron, Laura, and I all agreed that someday we should have houses with
wisteria growing on them.

Our Week with Chris

Our egg guy's new truck.

We arrived home Friday night and Saturday was kind of a rest and recovery day after three jam-packed days in Paris. Lisa and I went to the Saturday market, though, and it was nice to see all our favorite vendors. We had a nice chat with the people we buy apples from (they both held up the rest of the line just to talk to us!) and the guy we buy eggs from had purchased a new truck in our absence. He was very proud of this truck.

Free water outside the Franco-American Institute.
That's the American part.

Sundays are pretty slow days around here since most everything is closed. In the afternoon, though, I took Chris into central Rennes to show him around the city a little bit. We saw many of the same things as when Sarah was here (the cathedral, the tourist office, the outside of the city hall and the opera) but we also went into two churches I'd never seen before: Saint Sauveur (which was small and dark, but had several worshipers inside) and Saint Aubin (a modern, late 19th/early 20th century neo-Gothic church which was smaller on the inside than I expected).

Vegetarian Haggis for Tuesday's dinner!

On Monday, I went with Chris to Mont-Saint-Michel, an obvious must-see for anyone who comes to visit us. Unfortunately, Lisa had to stay home and tutor as well as practice her French with some locals. I thought it was supposed to rain, but it turned into a surprisingly nice day as we ate our picnic lunch outside. It was very crowded, too, much more so than when we went in December or with Jimmy and Jenny in January. There were lots of families with little kids there; I guess that's what you do on your two-week Easter vacation - take your kids to Mont-Saint-Michel! Other than that, though, there wasn't much new for me. On my fourth visit, it all seemed like old hat. Changes are coming, though. April 28th was the last day that cars could drive out on the causeway and park at the foot of the mount. Now you have to park some distance away on the mainland and take a shuttle. This is all part of the plan to remove the causeway by 2014. After we returned to Rennes that afternoon, we met Lisa and went to English Club, which was rather sparsely attended, what with it still being Easter vacation and all.

Parliament tour with Gobelin tapestry in the background.

Tuesday, we went to a lunch-time piano concert. Chris really likes classical concerts and this was the only one we could find in Rennes during his week here. There were plenty advertised for the week after he left, though, and all I can figure is that Easter vacation means the art scene in Rennes shuts down, too! Anyway, it was a benefit concert for Rennes' sister city in Japan and it was put on at the International House of Rennes (which always sounds to me like "International House of Pancakes"). Lunch was included in the price, which was nice, and the pianist was pretty good. He played Beethoven, Schumann, and Chopin and he got better as he went along - there were several missed notes in the Beethoven, but the Chopin sounded near-perfect. After the concert, Lisa and Chris took the tour of the parliament building (the same one we did with Sarah, but with a different tour guide, so Lisa learned a few new facts) while I came home to get groceries and start on dinner. We re-created the vegetarian haggis we had at Henderson's in Edinburgh (recipe here), and rather successfully, too, I might add!

Stained-glass window in Dinan.

On Wednesday, I went with Chris to Normandy to see the American Cemetery at Omaha Beach while Lisa stayed home to tutor and missed out on yet another opportunity to visit her favorite region of France. Turns out, it's much harder to get to without a car! We took a train to Bayeux, then waited half an hour for a bus that took us to the cemetery, about a half-hour ride. Again, it was supposed to be a cold, windy, rainy day, but we managed to avoid most of the rain and it was actually partly sunny most of the time we were there. It was very windy, though, which dampened the experience a bit! Since I'd seen the cemetery and the beach in January with Jimmy and Jenny, I wasn't expecting much new. But Chris and I joined a free guided tour, led by a retired British history teacher who now works at the cemetery, and I learned a few more things about the site. He showed us the "wall of the missing," the grave of Theodore Roosevelt, Jr. who landed at Utah Beach at age 56 and died of a heart attack a month later, and the graves of two brothers who inspired "Saving Private Ryan." It was very interesting and I'm glad we did. Unfortunately, though, we were on a tight schedule because there was only one bus back to Bayeux and the train station all afternoon!

Us in Dinan.

Chris left Thursday afternoon to spend the night in Paris before flying home early Friday morning. Before he did, though, we all took the bus to Dinan Thursday morning. I had been there with Sarah, but Lisa hadn't been back since our first trip there way back in September. It was another cloudy, rainy spring day in Brittany (although there were some occasional breaks in the rain). We saw quite a bit of the town - the ramparts, the churches (in one of which the organist was practicing), and the stores.

Hurdy gurdy player in Dinan.

Plus, we discovered that Thursday is market day in Dinan, so we enjoyed that for a bit. It's different from our Saturday market in Cesson in that there were more vendors of clothes and jewelry and crafts than food (which is the opposite of our market). We also were serenaded by a guy playing a hurdy gurdy.

Where Aaron got his Baedeker.

The best part of the trip for me, though, was that I happened to see a Baedaker guidebook in the window of an antique store and we went in for a look. This one was in French, from 1903 and for Paris. We saw that the price inside the front cover was "650" so we asked the proprietor, is it six hundred and fifty euros? To which he replied, "No, no six euros and fifty cents!" That's about a quarter of the price of the one I bought in Cambridge, so we snapped it up for my ever-increasing collection! After walking around, we went to a little tea shop to get out of the rain, before heading back to the bus stop to make sure Chris got back to Rennes to collect his bags and get to the train station on time.

Chris on his way.

It was an all-around good visit from Chris (and we hope had a good time, too!). Even though we're now repeating a lot of things with our visitors, it seems like there are always a few new things to discover at these places, keeping them interesting for us, too.  We look forward to seeing Chris again soon stateside.