If not for the corkscrew we would have nothing to survive on but food and water.....

Market Day in Dinan

This was the makings of our pot au feu.....also artichokes.

Wednesday

Hannah and Rachel inside the ruins of the 12th century Fort LaLatte on the north coast of Brittany.













Here we are in front of the castle "keep."










This is the view from the castle down the cliffs to the sea. It doesn't really show how very frightening it was. Not to mention you can't hear the crash of the waves on the rocks. It was so beautiful.










We stopped at the beach and enjoyed watching Hannah and Rachel run....it was a perfectly beautiful day. It is Thursday morning now and I am going off to the local market with our neighbor Shelly, who is a chef in New Zealand while Joel watches the kids. Will write more later.

Not Your Usual Day at the Beach

Here is one of the old German bunkers on the cliff over Omaha Beach where thousands of American and British soldiers lost their lives on June 6, 1944 - D-Day. I was surprised that they were still just sitting there...on a cliff over one of the most beautiful coastlines I have ever seen. One can only imagine what it was like that day.










We were happy in a very "unhappy" way to be here today.














This is a view up the coast in Normandy.

"He was a bold man that first ate an oyster"....Jonathan Swift

You do have to wonder about what would prompt the first person to eat an oyster, not to mention other foods like liver, raw egg yolks and of course, scorpions. I do love them and we certainly had a few today.





Hannah and Rachel in front of one of the "huitre" stands in Cancale. The last time we were here the oysters were so much cheaper but they are still as good as ever.







Here I am with Hannah and Rachel at the beach in Cancale at low tide. After a few minutes the jackets and especially the scarf came off...it was a nice sunny, warm day....the kind of day where it is warm but you can still sit in the sun.....I know I forgot how that can be in Arizona.






She sells sea shells by the sea shore.








Joel's oysters....haha.







We had a great day today. The last and only other time we ever were here in Cancale was in 1996. I always wanted to go back and today we finally did. I just love showing Hannah and Rachel new places. They are very easy to travel with and usually pretty flexible. Rachel did in fact taste an oyster (she didn't like it), Hannah of course didn't try one....no surprises there.

French Laundry

Our place has a washer but no dryer so I did a load of wash - had to get the smell of the airplane off our clothes....and then hang them out to dry. I don't think I had ever touched a clothespin in my entire adult life....haha.

Joel and Hannah and Rachel are still sleeping (for 12 hours now and I think I'll let them). I myself got up early. It is a beautiful day and you can hear people walking up the street in front of the house, and some Sunday bicyclists just roared down the cobblestoned street. We are on the 2nd and 3rd floor of the house so I can look out and over the street pretty anonomously. It was pretty funny because an older gentleman was just now peering through the first floor apartment and didn't notice me noticing him being curious about what was in that flat....I could see the top of his bald head as he was being nosy.....

First Day

What an amazingly long day. Here is Hannah at the Admiral's club in Dallas. We had a three hour layover and she got to take a nap.















Well, after a ten hour flight from Dallas to Paris, we got our car and drove on over to Dinan, in Brittany. It was a 4.5 hour drive but we used our new GPS so it went very smoothly. We got to see Mont St. Michel in the distance (spectacular) and we will get back there in a few days. The drive was lovely but long after such a long flight but we did it!! Here I am with Hannah in Dinan and this is at 6 AM, Saturday morning after having been travelling for over 24 hours. We feel pretty good and I have not really had any sleep.















This is the view of the street from our bedroom window. Everything here is impossibly old. I love it. More pictures to follow...don't forget you can click on any picture to see it full size.....just hit your browser back button to return to the blog.


















This is the view from the living room window out to the street. The rental is really lovely. The owner left us a bottle of wine, some bread, cheese and pate and some coloring books and crayons for Hannah and Rachel. That made us feel very welcome. The road up to the rental is soooooo steep and the cobblestones are so old that walking is tricky (until we get used to it).

The town is on the River Rance and the port is gorgeous. The sky is so blue and the weather is gorgeous. We are going to go down to a local pizzaria for an early dinner then we will have to sleep, shower, unpack etc.

This town of Dinan is an old midieval town and we are going to have so much fun exploring.

I will let Joel tell those of you who might be interested about the fun time he had trying to manuever the car up this narrow street in order to drop off our luggage.......

After unpacking, we were going to just go to a little pizza place nearby but were tempted by the local mussels so that's what we had for dinner. It was nice - they were so tiny, I can't eat the bigger ones. We had that and fish soup - very "Bretagne"....We took a long walk around town to familiarize ourselves with the place. Then we all showered and went to bed around 10:00 even though it was still light out, after having been up for 31.5 hours. I didn't sleep at all in that timeframe, H/R slept about 3 hours total and Joel maybe 1 or 2.

"See" you tomorrow.