Whew!! If I'm going to really be a "blogger," I guess I'd better start posting more often!!
Greetings from Toulouse!It is Saturday, May 28 and I am relaxing in my digs here after a busy day. Now...to catch up..............
We were up and out very early Wednesday morning to catch the 7:30am train to St. Malo, in Brittany. It was there that we joined an 8+ hour tour of the area. St. Malo and Dinan (our second stop) are medieval cities steeped in so much history. Both were originally totally behind great, thick walls, but have now grown past them. St. Malo is on the English Channel and has been a strategic spot for centuries. Walking the top of the wall gave us spectacular views of both the old city within and the sea outside. The province is called Brittany because it was originally settled by Celts and Scots and Britons.....many centuries ago. It has its own language, based on Welsh (so no one on earth can understand it!) and the culture is quite different from the rest of France. In Dinan, we entered the city via an ancient gate and hiked our way up and up and up and up and up to the main part of town. For protection, this city was built on top of a hill and this old lady's legs were really screaming when we finally reached the top! Brittany is famous for its crepes, galettes and cider. We had a fabulous lunch at one of the many cafes......salad and crepes....Kary's was sausage (andouille, like in New Orleans) and onion and mine was mushrooms, cheese and garlic, garlic, garlic....heavenly. The crepes are made from locally grown and milled buckwheat. They are delicious with out being heavy. And the cider is alcoholic, but more like 3/2 beer. It's yummy. From Dinan we headed to the highlight of the day, Mont Saint Michel. I could go into details here, but would have to write volumes.... if it interests you, check it out on Wikipedia. What a spectacular sight! The construction here was begun in the year 780 and the abbey is incredibly beautiful. It was another brutal climb, but worth the effort. For icing on the cake, our tour group was only 5 people....Kary, me and three very pleasant ladies from New Zealand. After a 3 hour train ride back to Paris and our apartment, we literally collapsed!
On to Thursday, May 26th......Getting going early wasn't in the cards!! We had a leisurely breakfast at "home" and got out about noon. Since there were things in Paris that I had already seen and Kary had not, we went our separate ways. He headed to the Eiffel Tower and went to the top.....it is an amazing view and well worth the wait. I headed to a place called La Civette, a famous tobacco shop, in business since 1716, in a swanky shopping district. No, I haven't taken up smoking, but wanted to buy a birthday gift for a friend who smokes cigars. There certainly was a temptation to buy some nice Cubans, but I didn't want to risk having US Customs take them off me, so I bought something else (a secret because he may read this!) Afterwards I walked to the Ile St. Louis, most of the way along the Seine. It was a beautiful day and I stopped a couple of times just to have a sit and watch the river.....beautiful!! By this time I was pretty hungry, so stopped into a little resto on the island and had a salad and mushroom risotto....mmmmmmmm.....good!
I swear, if I could buy a bottle of the vinaigrette they serve on salads here, I would just drink it!! But it cannot be bought in bottles or in any other containers because it is always homemade (could this be a hint??). I walked around, went into a couple of cool art galleries and met Kary at the Berthillon ice cream store and we did a true pig-out. When I figure out how to post photos here, I'll show you our ice cream towers...they truly are indescribable! After waddling to the Metro, we went back home to pack for our journey the next day to Toulouse. More about that in a bit......I need to make myself some dinner!
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