Brittany

What is it about kids getting sick on vacation? I don't think we ever went on vacation when I was a kid that we didn't stop at an all-night pharmacy for something. Ella and Jonah continued this tradition on our vacation this past week to Brittany. They are well now, though, and we are home from our trip, having seen some terrific sights in the Northwest corner of France despite their illness and the grumpiness that went along with it.

We left on Saturday and decided to take the smaller road, rather than the highway, to enjoy the countryside more. The hardest part was getting out of Paris which always takes about an hour no matter where in the city we pick up the car. We got to the bed and breakfast in Saint-Servan late in the afternoon. I guess we are pretty picky about B & B's because we always rule out places that have indoor pets or if the bed has a footboard (Abe is allergic and tall). We never thought to rule out a place because of a straw rug, but unfortunately, the rug in this B & B affected Abe's allergies too (to me it smelled like the beach, to Abe it smelled like a barn). After the long drive, and with the kids feeling under the weather, dinner at the pizza place in the commercial center just next to the B & B sounded perfect to us. Not much for local charm, but perfect for ease and an early night to bed.

Sunday, Ella was already feeling much better, as demonstrated by her hearty enjoyment of the breakfast buffet. We headed for Saint Malo and the beach. Saint Malo is a fantastic port city surrounded on three sides by the sea and the enormous ramparts that protected it over the ages from both the sea and enemy attacks. It was home to merchants and privateers who contributed to the wealth of the region (Ella was convinced she would find buried treasure on the beach). The kids had a blast collecting shells on the beach (Ella quickly turned her attention from treasure hunting to breaking open oysters to find a pearl). We explored the tide pools, and walked around the ramparts and the souvenir shops. We also checked out rue Chateaubriand which was the birthplace of the writer (and oddly, the former Jewish quarter of Saint Malo). The beach-y restaurant where we had lunch had a full size statue of Marilyn Monroe at the top of the stair which Jonah fell in love with. He also mastered during this lunch the gist of the game "animal or person" (our family's version of 20 questions). Until that point he had been unable to keep himself from immediately revealing what he was thinking of (we would say, "are you thinking of an animal or a person?" and he would say "it's an elephant."). But, things weren't quite smooth sailing yet. Abe's camera wasn't working! We worked out a plan for visiting the commercial center first thing in the morning in the hopes that a new memory card would do the trick. For dinner we ate crepes (a regional specialty - I especially recommend the banana and chocolate crepe for dessert) and during dinner Ella lost her second tooth (the tooth fairy is very clever to find Ella first in Paris and then in Brittany).

With a plan to spend the day on Monday at Mont Saint Michel, we were very relieved that a new memory card put Abe's camera back in working order. Mont Saint Michel is not a place you want to visit without a camera. MSM is an island at high tide, but approachable by a causeway at low tide. About a thousand years ago a bishop had a vision in which he was told to build an abbey on this island. MSM was not only religiously central as a pilgrimage site, but also politically central as a defense outpost off the coast of Normandy, so it benefited from generous investments over the years. It's hard to describe how magnificent the buildings and site of MSM are, but it's not surprising that it is the most visited site in France. Even off-season, it was pretty crowded.

On the way home, we opted to drive a few kilometers out of our way to see the menhir at Champs Dolent. A menhir is a rock stuck upright in the ground (think Stonehenge). This particular menhir is roughly 30 feet tall - which doesn't sound like much compared to MSM, but when you stand right next to it, it is really impressive (I'm in the photo for scale). No one knows for sure how or why these rocks got there. There was a sign next to this menhir with a ridiculous story about how two brothers were fighting and an angel threw this stone down from heaven to stop their fight. It further elaborated that the stone sinks into the earth imperceptibly each time someone dies and that once the rock can no longer be seen, it will be the final judgment day. I was delighted that someone had taken the time to write graffiti above the story that the history of menhirs has nothing to do with Christianity and it would be good to try to inform the public better in the future. Tired of restaurants, we finished off the day with a picnic on the floor of our B & B room while watching the Olympic snowboarding (the picnic included an apple tart with a valentine's day heart on top). While we watched, Jonah adopted the TV remote control as his baby (we didn't bring many toys with us on our trip). He asked us all to be quiet because his baby was sleeping. He explained, "my baby has had a very long and hard day turning the TV on and off."

The last day of our trip was sunny and warm (you would almost have thought Spring) so we spent as much time as possible by the sea. We started at the carved rocks of Rotheneuf. Over the course of 25 years an abbey made it his daily work to carve figures (some 300 of them) into the rocks on a cliff facing the bay (http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~fhs/rotheneuf.htm) to pretty spectacular effect. Then, we spent the rest of the day playing at the beach at Saint Malo. It was warm enough to picnic outside. We walked out to some of the tiny island fortresses that can be reached over sandbars at low tide, and then hung out on the beach and watched the tide rush in (stragglers who stayed too long on the islands got pretty wet on their way back) . Even in February, spending the day by the sea is rejuvenating.

In the evening, we went back to the commercial center one more time (who would have guessed that a mall would feature so prominently in our Brittany experience) and spent some time browsing around the bookstore (The name of the store was "Cultura" and their slogan was "Culture for everyone" which appealed very much). Jonah spent the whole time looking at a book about the Disney Princesses and announced when it was time to go that he was going to buy it for his birthday (by which he meant we should buy it for him right now). He was devastated to leave the store without it (he was also pretty tired, which means he gets devastated easily).