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It's now two full weeks since I left Brittany, and I'm a little sadder about that than I anticipated being while I was there. I keep having to stop what I'm doing to gaze nostalgically at my giant wall map of Brittany in my office, and search out all the places I visited and passed through...
So, after the fashion of my And me one traveller post, which I made after my similarly exciting whirlwind tour of Britain in April 2005, here is my itemized account of my first-ever trip to Brittany.
This photo is, of course, a repeat from the day I visited Redon and the abbey of Saint-Sauveur, but I think my nerdy glee is important; it pretty much encapsulates everything!
Five highlights:
5) Being in transit, all week, all over:
Reduced train schedules and a national day of strikes the day we had to get from Nantes to Vannes notwithstanding, simply passing through the landscape of Brittany was exciting to me. My travels weren't enough to give me much sense of the general lay of the land, but I got a little - for instance, the area around Nantes and between Nantes and Vannes is far flatter than I expected, but there is a narrow but nasty ridge of hills between Redon and Rennes, and the Breton-Norman borderlands northeast of Rennes are pretty hilly too. More importantly, though, it meant that every few minutes I passed through a new place that I'd read about, or worked on a charter related to it. I kept having to poke Marek, who used most of the trips to work on his medieval history readings, to be like "OMG Marek, it's Saint-Gildas-des-Bois and there's the abbey church! This is Romazy and I totally have a bunch of pictures of its charters on my camera right now... and now this is Tremblay and SAME THING!!" Also, being in transit was what first got me to Redon, where we had to stop between the bus-replacement service to there from Nantes and the sketchy ride on the TGV from there to Vannes, during which we stood in the entryway of a train car without actually having a ticket for it, as we were told to do by the SNCF agents at the station in Redon. Luckily it's only about a 25-minute trip.
How great was my nerdy glee? Oh yes. Taken during our connection, in case we didn't make it back to explore properly, which we did.
4) Saint-Malo, November 2/3, 2010:
I initially added Saint-Malo to the itinerary for the week because I couldn't get a reservation in the hotel in Rennes for that night, and because the Guide Michelin gave Saint-Malo three stars according to its silly attraction-rating system. After our three nights in not-Rennes (story to follow), and at the end of the week, I wasn't particularly excited to haul all my baggage into Rennes, onto the train, and to a new hostel in Saint-Malo for one night before the trip back to Paris via Rennes (again), but I ended up being very glad I did. Saint-Malo is excellent! It has an exciting walled old town full of creperies and kitschy tourist shops, where Marek and I spent a very enjoyable afternoon exploring and wandering around the ramparts taking pictures. It also has a gorgeous seawall and beach outside the walls. As soon as I saw the first of many people running along the seawall, as Marek and I were walking from our hostel toward the ramparts, I knew I had to go running there, and I did, the following morning before we left. It wasn't the greatest run, since I hadn't been out at all the previous week, but it was a great location, and hopefully I'll be back sometime to run there again.
Some of the ramparts and the fancy stone buildings of Saint-Malo. A bit of beach, too, where there was a sailing school.
3) Mont-Saint-Michel, November 1, 2010:
This, like Saint-Malo, wasn't originally on the itinerary, because I didn't think there was going to be any way to get there easily without a car. Marek really wanted to go, though, so I investigated further on the grounds that he'd put up with my nerdy desire to go to Redon (see below), as well as pretty much everything else. I'm glad I did! And happily, many things are available to those who are willing to pay, including buses from Rennes to Mont-Saint-Michel. It wasn't even that expensive! There were complications with getting into Rennes from not-Rennes, and then confusion as to whether the bus we wanted to take was actually running when it was supposed to be (it was, but none of the train-announcement boards listed it), but everything worked out, and it was excellent. Even the fact that it was hideously crowded with other people who had the same idea about how to spend Toussaint didn't really detract from it. The abbey is really amazing, and I only wish we'd decided to fork over (or I had - Marek got in free between being under 25 and having a French student card even as I paid full price) for the really in-depth tour. We didn't take the guided tour, although we eavesdropped on some groups, but some of the monastery is only open to people on the in-depth tour. Plus, once we got to the last room, we discovered that we wouldn't be able to start again, and that was kind of disappointing, if not that surprising. I'll have to find a way to go back, but with medievalists next time - I'm hoping for a relevant conference, because the nerdy glee would be even more epic than it was with Marek and I.
Le Mont-Saint-Michel, from partway across the causeway, at the end of the day. The tidal channel to the left is part of the estuary of the Couesnon, which was the boundary between Normandy and Brittany in the eleventh century. At the beginning of the century, Mont-Saint-Michel was much more closely affiliated with the dukes of Brittany than it was with the dukes of Normandy, and thus I am counting this as more or less still Brittany.
2) Vannes, October 28-30, 2010:
Vannes was always on my itinerary, as one of the major centres of eleventh-century (and modern) Brittany, and because advisor R recommended it strongly to me on several occasions before I even started planning this trip. Despite the anguish of getting there (which went smoothly in practice, but caused a great deal of dread and stress in anticipation), Vannes did not disappoint. For one thing, our hotel was for once (again, stories to follow) very conveniently located. For another, it has awesome late-medieval ramparts, which enclose a vastly pleasing little late-medieval city core. Like Saint-Malo, it was quite touristy, but after Nantes, which was gritty and aggressively not touristy, that was a nice change. Plus, it gave us a wide range of crèperies to choose from, and some truly glorious kitsch of the "CELTIC=FAIRIES AND SEXY ARTHURIAN WOMEN AND MERLIN OMG!!" variety to mock. In our initial venture out into the city, we also made the EPIC discovery of the Lenn ha Dilenn Librairie Bretonne, which was prominently advertising tickets for, and also the album of ANNE DE BRETAGNE: LE ROCK OPERA D'ALAN SIMON. We were immediately like "WE WILL BE BACK LATER FOR THIS! HALFSIES ON BUYING IT, YESSSS!?!" We also had our first, and very delicious it was, creperie supper our first night in Vannes, and took many pictures, and greatly enjoyed ourselves (as well as making the glorious acquisition of ANNE DE BRETAGNE: LE ROCK OPERA, which made up for everything it lacked in mockability by actually not being bad at all and having some truly good moments).
Wash-houses outside the city walls of Vannes. Their historicity may be dubious, but sometimes I am willing to let that go if it involves picturesque half-timber.
1) Redon, October 29, 2010
I'd reconciled myself to not making it to Redon at the outset of this trip, because I decided it just wouldn't work with all the baggage I was hauling around, but then the train trip from Redon to Vannes turned out to be less than half an hour long, and I reconsidered. Reconceived as a day-trip from Vannes, Redon became an appealing prospect again, and for 20 Euros in train tickets (10 for Marek and his @#$#%@ carte 12-25), the highlight of my week in Brittany. I started my research on Brittany four years ago with the cartulary of the monastery of Saint-Sauveur de Redon, in my first few weeks of grad school. Substantial chunks of the abbey church date to the eleventh century. And there I was. I probably don't need to describe myself going around the nave patting the walls and columns. Redon itself turned out to be an interesting little town, too.
Signs on the bridge into Redon. Why yes, that is the eleventh-century tower of the abbey church you can see in the distance (the squat tower, not the pointy one).
And okay, that took longer than I hoped it would. So consider this installment the first of my compendious trip-to-Brittany update! I will be back later, hopefully tomorrow, with tales of mishaps, eating, sibling partnership in history geeking, and more.
So, after the fashion of my And me one traveller post, which I made after my similarly exciting whirlwind tour of Britain in April 2005, here is my itemized account of my first-ever trip to Brittany.
This photo is, of course, a repeat from the day I visited Redon and the abbey of Saint-Sauveur, but I think my nerdy glee is important; it pretty much encapsulates everything!
Five highlights:
5) Being in transit, all week, all over:
Reduced train schedules and a national day of strikes the day we had to get from Nantes to Vannes notwithstanding, simply passing through the landscape of Brittany was exciting to me. My travels weren't enough to give me much sense of the general lay of the land, but I got a little - for instance, the area around Nantes and between Nantes and Vannes is far flatter than I expected, but there is a narrow but nasty ridge of hills between Redon and Rennes, and the Breton-Norman borderlands northeast of Rennes are pretty hilly too. More importantly, though, it meant that every few minutes I passed through a new place that I'd read about, or worked on a charter related to it. I kept having to poke Marek, who used most of the trips to work on his medieval history readings, to be like "OMG Marek, it's Saint-Gildas-des-Bois and there's the abbey church! This is Romazy and I totally have a bunch of pictures of its charters on my camera right now... and now this is Tremblay and SAME THING!!" Also, being in transit was what first got me to Redon, where we had to stop between the bus-replacement service to there from Nantes and the sketchy ride on the TGV from there to Vannes, during which we stood in the entryway of a train car without actually having a ticket for it, as we were told to do by the SNCF agents at the station in Redon. Luckily it's only about a 25-minute trip.
How great was my nerdy glee? Oh yes. Taken during our connection, in case we didn't make it back to explore properly, which we did.
4) Saint-Malo, November 2/3, 2010:
I initially added Saint-Malo to the itinerary for the week because I couldn't get a reservation in the hotel in Rennes for that night, and because the Guide Michelin gave Saint-Malo three stars according to its silly attraction-rating system. After our three nights in not-Rennes (story to follow), and at the end of the week, I wasn't particularly excited to haul all my baggage into Rennes, onto the train, and to a new hostel in Saint-Malo for one night before the trip back to Paris via Rennes (again), but I ended up being very glad I did. Saint-Malo is excellent! It has an exciting walled old town full of creperies and kitschy tourist shops, where Marek and I spent a very enjoyable afternoon exploring and wandering around the ramparts taking pictures. It also has a gorgeous seawall and beach outside the walls. As soon as I saw the first of many people running along the seawall, as Marek and I were walking from our hostel toward the ramparts, I knew I had to go running there, and I did, the following morning before we left. It wasn't the greatest run, since I hadn't been out at all the previous week, but it was a great location, and hopefully I'll be back sometime to run there again.
Some of the ramparts and the fancy stone buildings of Saint-Malo. A bit of beach, too, where there was a sailing school.
3) Mont-Saint-Michel, November 1, 2010:
This, like Saint-Malo, wasn't originally on the itinerary, because I didn't think there was going to be any way to get there easily without a car. Marek really wanted to go, though, so I investigated further on the grounds that he'd put up with my nerdy desire to go to Redon (see below), as well as pretty much everything else. I'm glad I did! And happily, many things are available to those who are willing to pay, including buses from Rennes to Mont-Saint-Michel. It wasn't even that expensive! There were complications with getting into Rennes from not-Rennes, and then confusion as to whether the bus we wanted to take was actually running when it was supposed to be (it was, but none of the train-announcement boards listed it), but everything worked out, and it was excellent. Even the fact that it was hideously crowded with other people who had the same idea about how to spend Toussaint didn't really detract from it. The abbey is really amazing, and I only wish we'd decided to fork over (or I had - Marek got in free between being under 25 and having a French student card even as I paid full price) for the really in-depth tour. We didn't take the guided tour, although we eavesdropped on some groups, but some of the monastery is only open to people on the in-depth tour. Plus, once we got to the last room, we discovered that we wouldn't be able to start again, and that was kind of disappointing, if not that surprising. I'll have to find a way to go back, but with medievalists next time - I'm hoping for a relevant conference, because the nerdy glee would be even more epic than it was with Marek and I.
Le Mont-Saint-Michel, from partway across the causeway, at the end of the day. The tidal channel to the left is part of the estuary of the Couesnon, which was the boundary between Normandy and Brittany in the eleventh century. At the beginning of the century, Mont-Saint-Michel was much more closely affiliated with the dukes of Brittany than it was with the dukes of Normandy, and thus I am counting this as more or less still Brittany.
2) Vannes, October 28-30, 2010:
Vannes was always on my itinerary, as one of the major centres of eleventh-century (and modern) Brittany, and because advisor R recommended it strongly to me on several occasions before I even started planning this trip. Despite the anguish of getting there (which went smoothly in practice, but caused a great deal of dread and stress in anticipation), Vannes did not disappoint. For one thing, our hotel was for once (again, stories to follow) very conveniently located. For another, it has awesome late-medieval ramparts, which enclose a vastly pleasing little late-medieval city core. Like Saint-Malo, it was quite touristy, but after Nantes, which was gritty and aggressively not touristy, that was a nice change. Plus, it gave us a wide range of crèperies to choose from, and some truly glorious kitsch of the "CELTIC=FAIRIES AND SEXY ARTHURIAN WOMEN AND MERLIN OMG!!" variety to mock. In our initial venture out into the city, we also made the EPIC discovery of the Lenn ha Dilenn Librairie Bretonne, which was prominently advertising tickets for, and also the album of ANNE DE BRETAGNE: LE ROCK OPERA D'ALAN SIMON. We were immediately like "WE WILL BE BACK LATER FOR THIS! HALFSIES ON BUYING IT, YESSSS!?!" We also had our first, and very delicious it was, creperie supper our first night in Vannes, and took many pictures, and greatly enjoyed ourselves (as well as making the glorious acquisition of ANNE DE BRETAGNE: LE ROCK OPERA, which made up for everything it lacked in mockability by actually not being bad at all and having some truly good moments).
Wash-houses outside the city walls of Vannes. Their historicity may be dubious, but sometimes I am willing to let that go if it involves picturesque half-timber.
1) Redon, October 29, 2010
I'd reconciled myself to not making it to Redon at the outset of this trip, because I decided it just wouldn't work with all the baggage I was hauling around, but then the train trip from Redon to Vannes turned out to be less than half an hour long, and I reconsidered. Reconceived as a day-trip from Vannes, Redon became an appealing prospect again, and for 20 Euros in train tickets (10 for Marek and his @#$#%@ carte 12-25), the highlight of my week in Brittany. I started my research on Brittany four years ago with the cartulary of the monastery of Saint-Sauveur de Redon, in my first few weeks of grad school. Substantial chunks of the abbey church date to the eleventh century. And there I was. I probably don't need to describe myself going around the nave patting the walls and columns. Redon itself turned out to be an interesting little town, too.
Signs on the bridge into Redon. Why yes, that is the eleventh-century tower of the abbey church you can see in the distance (the squat tower, not the pointy one).
And okay, that took longer than I hoped it would. So consider this installment the first of my compendious trip-to-Brittany update! I will be back later, hopefully tomorrow, with tales of mishaps, eating, sibling partnership in history geeking, and more.