Brittany April 2008

Having landed in CDG on the first flight of the morning, Greg was waiting to whisk me away to Brittany for the weekend. 6 hours later we arrived and were straight away given the grand tour of the house. Then we were off to see a bit of the sea and the rolling landscape of Brittany. A welcomed change from Tokyo. We were then driven to a nearby park and had a gentle stroll through the woods. We then went back to the house for some lunch...a delicious ratatouille made by Greg's mum.




After lunch we went back out to admire the Pink granite cliffs, which have very strange forms carved into them from the sea and wind, there were very impressive boulders teetering precariously on top of other boulders. Until a couple of years ago, the area around the pink granite cliffs had been all but destroyed by tourists trampling all over the place, so now you are made to keep to quite a strict and narrow path. On the brightside, the view is much better than a few years ago, as the vegetation has grown back very happily and is now flourishing. I don't have any photos of the spikey bushes with little yellow flowers... but they were everywhere.

We walked up to a tower, built on a little outcrop of rocks, which had an impressive arch bridge built out of the same pink granite as the cliffs, and looked like it had grown out of the rock itself as the butressing rocks moulded around the ends of the bridges.

On the way back to the car, we stopped at a cafe on the beach to have a little drink, while watching the tide come in.

The next day started with lunch at a local restaurant, normally days start with breakfast, but I had a really nice lie-in so I skipped straight to lunch. The restaurant was very homely, and felt like we were sitting in someones own dining room. We were the youngest customers that day. Apparently, the best way to find a good restaurant in rural France is to follow old ladies to lunch, as they are highly trained in the art of seeking out the best food.

On the table next to us, there were four elderly ladies and gentlemen, and a dog (apparently a Tibetian dog ... with HUGE boggly eyes, which seemed to point in opposite directions.). The meal was very good, and started with little appetisers - part of which was foie gras ice cream... which i avoided, THEN came the starter. I chose fois gras, which appeared with salad on top of ginger bread (thin slices of gingery toast to compliment the rich and slightly sweet fois gras). Carefully cutting my poor over fed duck liver (Never spread fois gras, it's sacrilege!) I ate it with the ginger bread whilst sipping on the sweet white wine (something else that you should have with it). It was the best fois gras I have ever had, excellently smooth texture and rich in taste. Apparently, it is a speciality of Brittany. That and the seafood, which was the other option for a starter and involved a mini lobster arranged on the plate, so that it looked as though it were about to elegantly dive off it.

For out main course we had white fish which was very tender and tasty. My meal was adapted to exclude dairy products and came with tomato sauce instead of white creamy sauce, and my veges were a little different too. I had a fruit salad for my dessert, because everything on the menu was infested with cow juice (otherwise I would have headed straight for the creme brulee). All in all a brilliant meal!

Lannion - some very cool old shops in the town centre

After lunch we went for a little walk around the cobbed streets of Lannion, then along a little path along a tidal estury towards the sea, until the rain (which had been turning on and off all day) made us decide to go back to the car.

The End