Yet another extended weekend in France and this time, I had to do zero planning, zero paying, and I got to see more of France- what more could I ask for. The small price to pay was the fact that I'd be in a rented vacation home with about 25 other French people who spoke zero English and were either 15 and younger or 35 and older. Nonetheless, it was a nice vacation!
We started driving to Brittany (it's a region of France) Friday evening and at about midnight, we reached our motel where we slept. I was bunked with Malo and Julie while Fred, Delphine, and Alex were in a neighboring room. The following morning, we began our journey into the land of the Bretagnes. Driving through the quaint little villages of France was indeed a highlight of the weekend. While I may seem like I have traveled to many places, exploring within France has sadly not been among my adventures. What a treat!
We started out by visiting the Pays de Merlin, the country of Merlin. It's the region where supposedly, King Arthur pulled Excalibur out of the stone and where the whole folklore tale took place including the disposal of the sword in Lake Genevive. We didn't get to see the stone in the forest but we did visit a village of Merlin and also a Renaissance fair type place around the lake that houses the sword. It was a bit weird but it was also really cool! How many people can say they've been there? It's definitely a unique thing I love adding to my life story.
In fact, as Brittany's specialty food is crepes, my host family convinced me to eat a crepe saucisse from the medieval village. Of course I couldn't say no. I'm a foodie in France for a limited amount of time. Whats a girl to do? And, oh, how I miss crepes. It was divine.
We arrived at the vacation home filled with lots of French kids and lots of French people. At one point that day I overheard Delphine's brother say to his fiance, "She follows Julie a lot". His fiance responded, "Ya, well she's the only one she can talk to." I so badly regret not stopping and saying "hey I understood that!" but oh well. They will never know. And besides, my French was absolutely horrendous over the weekend. The one time I need it to be decent and the one weekend I need to have confidence gushing through my veins, I was lacking (actually I would argue being in the negative levels) of either. It was a quiiiiet weekend for Julia.
The first night, my gluten free self sat and ate scrambled eggs while the rest of the clan enjoyed crepes and galettes. My host mom looked at my little, gf, nutella bread and said, "Being gluten free and in Brittany is a punishment!" I could not agree more. Creperies on every corner!
By the end, I had made a cute little buddy named Clemence. As the daughter of Delphine's sister, she is an adorable little blond girl with a chubby little face and the same age as Alex. I wanted to wrap her up and take her home! For the record, I spoke to her in French....
I was included in the family which was nice and even scored a matching tee shirt and a spot in the beach tug-of-war.
We did a scavenger hunt through a picture-perfect little village in between Brest and Nantes with cute canals and old buildings, spent a day at the beach outside of Vannes (not to be confused with the French coast of Cannes where all the famous people are, dang it) and did a forest treasure hunt.
That evening, Malo and I were dropped off at the Vannes gare to catch a train back home to Paris so he could leave the next morning for his class trip to Normandy. Two hours later, we finally got on our train after some fire was finally extinguished and arrived in Paris at midnight. Delphine told us to take a taxi and I was more than willing! It was my first taxi ride ever and she was paying. Plus that got us home much faster than a train and walking.
The following morning, I woke Malo up after a short night of sleep and sent him off with his class while I showered and climbed right back in bed. I didn't sleep much so I just went into Paris with Hannah instead.
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