(no subject)
Another day, another livejournal post. I'm back, now two full weeks (minus an hour and a half or so) out from my return to Boston, with the next, and hopefully final, installment of my overview of my trip to Brittany. So, following yesterday's five highlights:
Four lows:
4) Strikes, October 26-31, 2010:
In the couple of weeks leading up to my departure from Angers, the various and ongoing strikes in response to Sarkozy's retirement reform (you saw all my whining) had me completely distraught, given the train-dependency of the whole trip. Happily, the train strikes were gradually winding down by the time I left, with the exception of the train Marek was originally going to take from Paris to Nantes being cancelled, and the national day of action on October 28th, the day we went from Nantes to Vannes. Actually getting from Nantes to Vannes didn't turn out to be too bad. We took a bus replacement service to Redon, and then got on a random TGV for 25 minutes to get from there to Vannes, and as a bonus, learned how to pronounce "Quimper." My level of worry beforehand, however, was totally hideous.
In addition to the train strikes, there were garbage strikes in various parts of France that ended right around when I left Angers. The one in Marseille got the most coverage, but Angers also had one, as, we discovered, did Nantes. Garbage pickup had clearly been restored in Nantes by the time we got there, but cleanup was very much still in progress, and the streets were pretty foul - foul enough that they seriously detracted from my visit. Hopefully everything will be cleaner, and possibly somewhat friendlier, when I return.
3) Not-Rennes and Montgermont Décoparc, October 30, 2010:
After our unpleasant adventures in finding our hotel in Nantes (to be detailed below), I was very careful for the rest of our trip to make sure I had good directions to each hotel we stayed in. Thus, when we arrived in Rennes, we headed straight for the metro, and from the designated metro stop, it was a fairly smooth and straightforward transfer onto the bus to our hotel. All was well, and once on the bus, we began to pass through various commercial and administrative zones, as I expected. I knew the hotel wasn't right in the city centre, and wasn't fazed - until commercial buildings gave way to several kilometers of bucolic countryside, followed by a large roundabout, and then by a gigantic industrial-looking shopping centre.
As it turned out, the hotel was not in Rennes. It was in not-Rennes, a village by the name of Montgermont. Montgermont the village was actually quite nice, but outside its residential area was... the Décoparc. The Décoparc was a giant big-box shopping centre development, in which all the buildings were identical, and all devoted to furniture and interior décor. Our hotel was at one end of this horrible consumer wasteland. I kind of felt like a huge tool for getting us into the whole situation, especially when I discovered that the suburban bus line that got us there had terrible weekend and holiday hours - and we were there for a Sunday and a holiday Monday. Oops. Evidently the people on tripadvisor.com who recommended it had cars.
The one upside of ending up in not-Rennes, besides the prospect of hilarity in retrospect (even at the time, I could recognize the potential retelling value in the story), is that, like I said, Montgermont was a nice little town. It had some good patisseries and a grocery store, which provided supper and other emergency items (again, see below). More importantly, it had a parish church that belonged to the monastery of Saint-Mélaine de Rennes in the eleventh-century (although the present church isn't that old), and a motte! The first motte I've seen in real life!
And here it is!
2) Hotel nowhere to be found in Nantes, October 26, 2010:
As foreshadowed above, Marek and I had some trouble finding our hotel once we arrived in Nantes at the beginning of the trip. We met up in the underground passageway at the Gare de Nantes without any problems and proceeded immediately to the very efficient tramway, which whisked us away to... me not having any idea which stop we should get off at. I thought the hotel was in the vicinity of the big stadium in Nantes, so we stayed on until the end of the line. That proved to be very far from our hotel, although not quite as far as we walked trying to find it. After roaming around the end of the tramway line with all our baggage for a while, we found a bus route map, which directed us to a bus stop with a name more or less the same as the road we were looking for. The bus stop was quite far away, but we dragged our stuff there, only to find it was on what was more or less an autoroute on-ramp, with no hotels nearby. From there, we headed toward what looked like possible hotels - and were very wrong, as we discovered about a kilometer in the wrong direction when we hit the tramway line again. Eventually, we dragged everything back to the intersection/on-ramp with the bus stop, and I put my stuff down and left it with Marek while I went out to scout the area. That was how I found the road we were looking for, across an overpass on the other side of the autoroute. Then, it was only a matter of hauling our luggage the kilometer or so down the road to our hotel at the VERY end of it.
And this is why I'm never travelling with more that one piece of luggage ever again. I only had two carry-on sized pieces, and I sent everything heavy home from Angers before I left for Brittany (10lbs/4.5kg worth!), but as it turns out, luggage doesn't have to be heavy to feel heavy when you've been hauling it around for a couple of hours and still don't know where you're going.
1) Mystery bite in Not-Rennes, October 31, 2010:
You probably all saw my post freaking out about this at the time. It was utterly awful. There I was, just chilling and waiting for Marek to wake up after our first of three nights in Not-Rennes, and I noticed a bite on my baby finger. It was a little bit itchy, and looked like it was a little bit infected. Being as my bedbug paranoia had me on high alert simply by virtue of being in a hotel, I immediately googled myself up some pictures of bedbug bites. Of course, bedbug bites can look like any number of other nondescript insect bites if they're not in their characteristic groups of three, and some of those nondescript insect bite lookalikes looked an awful lot like... mystery bite.
Once Marek woke up (I think I eventually woke him up when my panic became too great to be contained any longer), we took stock of the situation, which in addition to mystery bite, involved extremely poor bus service between Montgermont and Rennes for the next two days, as well as financial limitations. We decided to give it another night, since after further room-checking, we still couldn't find any more evidence of bedbug infestation than we found during our arrival check. Plus, we did find some flying non-bedbug insects that were, at least potentially, the culprit. To minimize our risk, should there be lurking bedbugs, we visited Montgermont's grocery store, which was happily open Sundays, and got some garbage backs to store our luggage in, and some ziploc bags for our dirty clothes. With our luggage thus encased in giant plastic bags, we felt able to carry on.
The prospect that bedbugs could be behind mystery bite, however, severely detracted from our day in Rennes. It wouldn't have been that great anyway, because nothing much in Rennes turned out to be open on Sundays, and the deserted downtown was actually pretty sketchy, although I don't think it would have been that way on a weekday with people around. We spent most of the afternoon having lunch at the train station and drinking coffee out of the train station instant coffee machines.
I was starting to feel less terrified by the evening, when we picked up kebabs and then took the bus out to the very edge of Rennes. From there, we walked back to Montgermont to see how long it took us to get there from the last stop on the nearest urban bus line. We needed to know how long because walking to catch an urban bus was the only way we had of getting back into Rennes for our trip to Mont-Saint-Michel on what was a holiday Monday, but it was also a fun walk through the bucolic Breton countryside. Much hilarity ensued, which kept me distracted until I had to go to bed, and potentially be visited by friends of the perpetrator of mystery bite. I managed to sleep, but there was definitely a moment when I woke up in the middle of the night and was on the verge of going to try and sleep in the shower.
The paranoia, might I add, has been slow to pass, and despite the fact that neither I nor Marek received any further mystery bites, or saw any evidence of bedbugs, I am still afraid that I brought some home with me, and monitoring my bed and every itch I feel (and there are many, because my winter dry skin has set in) just in case.
Three enjoyable experiences with food:
3) Kouign Amann, Saint-Malo, November 2, 2010:
To turn now to vastly more pleasant topics, food! Kouign Amann is a sweet pastry that is a Breton specialty (invented in the nineteenth century). It's apparently very well-known in France, as are many Breton things, because is a major tourist destination because of its beaches and beach resorts! At some point, I'd heard of it, so I felt strongly that we should sample it while we were there. Of course, when it came down to actually getting some, there was a problem - the problem of not having the faintest idea of how to pronounce Kouign Amann. As a result, we put off trying it until the very last opportunity, which was our day in Saint-Malo. We eventually located a highly touristy stand selling warm, individual-serving kouign amanns, and decided to go for it. I started off ordering in French and pointed when it came to what I actually wanted, and then Marek smoothly followed by saying he wanted the same thing I was having. Not the most graceful, but we got our kouign amann!
It was very sweet, and very buttery. The best way I can think of to describe it is that it was made up of a long, thin strip of pastry about the size and thickness of a strip of bubble tape (that is, gum that comes in a long, coiled strip a couple of centimeters wide and about a meter long). It was delicious, but heavy. I think some are more refined, perhaps if purchased from higher-end artisan patisseries, but I don't know. I don't know if something that butter-soaked can be anything but heavy. Our final verdict: delicious but demanding. And definitely don't try to eat more than one!
2) Sandwiches, Gare de Redon, October 28, 2010:
During our excitement-filled trip from Nantes to Vannes during the train strike, we had an hourlong layover in the Redon train station betwen our bus from Nantes and the TGV we put ourselves on to get to Vannes. That hour happened to correspond nicely with lunch time, so we did what French people do at lunchtime and got ourselves some takeout sandwiches from the restaurant in the station. Marek's was a chicken-vegetable one on a baguette and mine was an egg-feta-vegetable one on soft flatbread (what they call a suédois there, but I can't think of an equivalent here), and they were delicious! I can't vouch personally for Marek's, but he says it was amazing, and mine certainly was!
So if you ever happen to be in the train station in Redon at lunchtime, the sandwiches in the cooler next to the exit for the platforms, across from the information kiosk, and just outside the station restaurant and tabac, are seriously worth your while. Just beware the washrooms. They're free, but take my word for it and wait and pay 10 centimes in Vannes.
1) Crêperies, Vannes and Saint-Malo, October 28 and November 2, 2010:
The other Breton specialty that Marek and I felt compelled to sample was, of course, crêpes. We invested considerable time and effort in our selection of crêperies in both Vannes and Saint-Malo, and our efforts paid off spectacularly! We were particularly interested in finding crêperies with prix-fixe menus that included both cider and vegetarian options, and although our success was, on the surface, mixed, in both cases things worked out for the delicious, delicous best!
Our first crêperie supper was in Vannes, and we each had a 3-crepe menu with cider - in my case, despite no substitutions being available, there was no problem getting the ham left off the main-dish galette. I had a delicious emmental galette as an entrée, then a cheese, mushroom, and crème fraîche galette as the main dish, and finally a caramel and baked apple crêpe as dessert. OM NOM NOM. Marek, who had the same thing only with ham, and who had never had crêpes before, not even sad imitations outside Brittany, agreed. We were pretty big fans of the cider, too.
Our second crêperie supper was in Saint-Malo, and we had a hard time choosing a creperie there, particularly because come supper time, our midafternoon kouign amann snack was still weighing somewhat heavily upon us. But we were eventually drawn in by the giant Canadian and Québecois flags hanging both outside and inside the crêperie An Delenn. We were the only customers, so it took us some time to work up the courage to go in, but once we did, we were not disappointed! I had a delicious vegetable galette (and it had MANY veggies!) and then a delicious caramel crêpe for dessert, and again, OM NOM NOM. And again, we had cider, and generally basked in the ambiance of GIANT CANADIAN FLAG ON THE WALL. We actually wondered, although we didn't have the nerve to ask, if one of the owners is Québecois. Admittedly, Saint-Malo lays claim to a certain Canadian connection (where Canadian=French Canadian) as the birthplace of Jacques Cartier, who was the explorer who claimed what is now Quebec for France, but we felt that the Canadian flags in the crêperie were larger than necessary, if Jacques Cartier was the only Canadian connection. In any case, if you happen to be trying to choose a crêperie in Saint-Malo, we can definitely recommend this one!
Two nerdy sibling travellers:
2) Us, the matching set, in Nantes, in a former shipyard that has been reclaimed as a cool public space full of patrimoine industriel, October 27, 2010:
Marek and the patrimoine industriel, as taken by me.
Me and the patrimoine industriel, as taken by Marek.
1) Us, the matching set, on the bridge between Redon and Saint-Nicolas de Redon, and between the départements of Ille-et-Vilaine and Loire-Atlantique, October 29, 2010:
A questionable picture of me in Saint-Nicolas de Redon...
... and the corresponding, equally questionable one, of Marek in Redon!
And one dissertation project...
One week of hauling my luggage around Brittany at a demanding pace was not enough! I'll be back for much longer next year, doing the rest of the archival research for my dissertation. Some of that will be in Paris, at the Bibliothèque Nationale de France and the National Archives, but a lot of it will be in Brittany, and of that, the most substantial part will be in Rennes. Although Rennes did not exactly win me over this trip, I'll probably make it my base for further exploration, and for shorter trips to the departmental archives in the other departments of Brittany, and in the surrounding departments which also contain Breton materials. I'm thinking of renting or leasing a car for part of the time too, so I can really go out and explore all the tiny little villages that grew up around properties that eleventh-century nobles in Brittany donated to local, or not-so-local monasteries, for the redemption of their souls, and the souls of their parents and ancestors and descendants, and so that they could be neighbours with the monks and their patron saints.
Four lows:
4) Strikes, October 26-31, 2010:
In the couple of weeks leading up to my departure from Angers, the various and ongoing strikes in response to Sarkozy's retirement reform (you saw all my whining) had me completely distraught, given the train-dependency of the whole trip. Happily, the train strikes were gradually winding down by the time I left, with the exception of the train Marek was originally going to take from Paris to Nantes being cancelled, and the national day of action on October 28th, the day we went from Nantes to Vannes. Actually getting from Nantes to Vannes didn't turn out to be too bad. We took a bus replacement service to Redon, and then got on a random TGV for 25 minutes to get from there to Vannes, and as a bonus, learned how to pronounce "Quimper." My level of worry beforehand, however, was totally hideous.
In addition to the train strikes, there were garbage strikes in various parts of France that ended right around when I left Angers. The one in Marseille got the most coverage, but Angers also had one, as, we discovered, did Nantes. Garbage pickup had clearly been restored in Nantes by the time we got there, but cleanup was very much still in progress, and the streets were pretty foul - foul enough that they seriously detracted from my visit. Hopefully everything will be cleaner, and possibly somewhat friendlier, when I return.
3) Not-Rennes and Montgermont Décoparc, October 30, 2010:
After our unpleasant adventures in finding our hotel in Nantes (to be detailed below), I was very careful for the rest of our trip to make sure I had good directions to each hotel we stayed in. Thus, when we arrived in Rennes, we headed straight for the metro, and from the designated metro stop, it was a fairly smooth and straightforward transfer onto the bus to our hotel. All was well, and once on the bus, we began to pass through various commercial and administrative zones, as I expected. I knew the hotel wasn't right in the city centre, and wasn't fazed - until commercial buildings gave way to several kilometers of bucolic countryside, followed by a large roundabout, and then by a gigantic industrial-looking shopping centre.
As it turned out, the hotel was not in Rennes. It was in not-Rennes, a village by the name of Montgermont. Montgermont the village was actually quite nice, but outside its residential area was... the Décoparc. The Décoparc was a giant big-box shopping centre development, in which all the buildings were identical, and all devoted to furniture and interior décor. Our hotel was at one end of this horrible consumer wasteland. I kind of felt like a huge tool for getting us into the whole situation, especially when I discovered that the suburban bus line that got us there had terrible weekend and holiday hours - and we were there for a Sunday and a holiday Monday. Oops. Evidently the people on tripadvisor.com who recommended it had cars.
The one upside of ending up in not-Rennes, besides the prospect of hilarity in retrospect (even at the time, I could recognize the potential retelling value in the story), is that, like I said, Montgermont was a nice little town. It had some good patisseries and a grocery store, which provided supper and other emergency items (again, see below). More importantly, it had a parish church that belonged to the monastery of Saint-Mélaine de Rennes in the eleventh-century (although the present church isn't that old), and a motte! The first motte I've seen in real life!
And here it is!
2) Hotel nowhere to be found in Nantes, October 26, 2010:
As foreshadowed above, Marek and I had some trouble finding our hotel once we arrived in Nantes at the beginning of the trip. We met up in the underground passageway at the Gare de Nantes without any problems and proceeded immediately to the very efficient tramway, which whisked us away to... me not having any idea which stop we should get off at. I thought the hotel was in the vicinity of the big stadium in Nantes, so we stayed on until the end of the line. That proved to be very far from our hotel, although not quite as far as we walked trying to find it. After roaming around the end of the tramway line with all our baggage for a while, we found a bus route map, which directed us to a bus stop with a name more or less the same as the road we were looking for. The bus stop was quite far away, but we dragged our stuff there, only to find it was on what was more or less an autoroute on-ramp, with no hotels nearby. From there, we headed toward what looked like possible hotels - and were very wrong, as we discovered about a kilometer in the wrong direction when we hit the tramway line again. Eventually, we dragged everything back to the intersection/on-ramp with the bus stop, and I put my stuff down and left it with Marek while I went out to scout the area. That was how I found the road we were looking for, across an overpass on the other side of the autoroute. Then, it was only a matter of hauling our luggage the kilometer or so down the road to our hotel at the VERY end of it.
And this is why I'm never travelling with more that one piece of luggage ever again. I only had two carry-on sized pieces, and I sent everything heavy home from Angers before I left for Brittany (10lbs/4.5kg worth!), but as it turns out, luggage doesn't have to be heavy to feel heavy when you've been hauling it around for a couple of hours and still don't know where you're going.
1) Mystery bite in Not-Rennes, October 31, 2010:
You probably all saw my post freaking out about this at the time. It was utterly awful. There I was, just chilling and waiting for Marek to wake up after our first of three nights in Not-Rennes, and I noticed a bite on my baby finger. It was a little bit itchy, and looked like it was a little bit infected. Being as my bedbug paranoia had me on high alert simply by virtue of being in a hotel, I immediately googled myself up some pictures of bedbug bites. Of course, bedbug bites can look like any number of other nondescript insect bites if they're not in their characteristic groups of three, and some of those nondescript insect bite lookalikes looked an awful lot like... mystery bite.
Once Marek woke up (I think I eventually woke him up when my panic became too great to be contained any longer), we took stock of the situation, which in addition to mystery bite, involved extremely poor bus service between Montgermont and Rennes for the next two days, as well as financial limitations. We decided to give it another night, since after further room-checking, we still couldn't find any more evidence of bedbug infestation than we found during our arrival check. Plus, we did find some flying non-bedbug insects that were, at least potentially, the culprit. To minimize our risk, should there be lurking bedbugs, we visited Montgermont's grocery store, which was happily open Sundays, and got some garbage backs to store our luggage in, and some ziploc bags for our dirty clothes. With our luggage thus encased in giant plastic bags, we felt able to carry on.
The prospect that bedbugs could be behind mystery bite, however, severely detracted from our day in Rennes. It wouldn't have been that great anyway, because nothing much in Rennes turned out to be open on Sundays, and the deserted downtown was actually pretty sketchy, although I don't think it would have been that way on a weekday with people around. We spent most of the afternoon having lunch at the train station and drinking coffee out of the train station instant coffee machines.
I was starting to feel less terrified by the evening, when we picked up kebabs and then took the bus out to the very edge of Rennes. From there, we walked back to Montgermont to see how long it took us to get there from the last stop on the nearest urban bus line. We needed to know how long because walking to catch an urban bus was the only way we had of getting back into Rennes for our trip to Mont-Saint-Michel on what was a holiday Monday, but it was also a fun walk through the bucolic Breton countryside. Much hilarity ensued, which kept me distracted until I had to go to bed, and potentially be visited by friends of the perpetrator of mystery bite. I managed to sleep, but there was definitely a moment when I woke up in the middle of the night and was on the verge of going to try and sleep in the shower.
The paranoia, might I add, has been slow to pass, and despite the fact that neither I nor Marek received any further mystery bites, or saw any evidence of bedbugs, I am still afraid that I brought some home with me, and monitoring my bed and every itch I feel (and there are many, because my winter dry skin has set in) just in case.
Three enjoyable experiences with food:
3) Kouign Amann, Saint-Malo, November 2, 2010:
To turn now to vastly more pleasant topics, food! Kouign Amann is a sweet pastry that is a Breton specialty (invented in the nineteenth century). It's apparently very well-known in France, as are many Breton things, because is a major tourist destination because of its beaches and beach resorts! At some point, I'd heard of it, so I felt strongly that we should sample it while we were there. Of course, when it came down to actually getting some, there was a problem - the problem of not having the faintest idea of how to pronounce Kouign Amann. As a result, we put off trying it until the very last opportunity, which was our day in Saint-Malo. We eventually located a highly touristy stand selling warm, individual-serving kouign amanns, and decided to go for it. I started off ordering in French and pointed when it came to what I actually wanted, and then Marek smoothly followed by saying he wanted the same thing I was having. Not the most graceful, but we got our kouign amann!
It was very sweet, and very buttery. The best way I can think of to describe it is that it was made up of a long, thin strip of pastry about the size and thickness of a strip of bubble tape (that is, gum that comes in a long, coiled strip a couple of centimeters wide and about a meter long). It was delicious, but heavy. I think some are more refined, perhaps if purchased from higher-end artisan patisseries, but I don't know. I don't know if something that butter-soaked can be anything but heavy. Our final verdict: delicious but demanding. And definitely don't try to eat more than one!
2) Sandwiches, Gare de Redon, October 28, 2010:
During our excitement-filled trip from Nantes to Vannes during the train strike, we had an hourlong layover in the Redon train station betwen our bus from Nantes and the TGV we put ourselves on to get to Vannes. That hour happened to correspond nicely with lunch time, so we did what French people do at lunchtime and got ourselves some takeout sandwiches from the restaurant in the station. Marek's was a chicken-vegetable one on a baguette and mine was an egg-feta-vegetable one on soft flatbread (what they call a suédois there, but I can't think of an equivalent here), and they were delicious! I can't vouch personally for Marek's, but he says it was amazing, and mine certainly was!
So if you ever happen to be in the train station in Redon at lunchtime, the sandwiches in the cooler next to the exit for the platforms, across from the information kiosk, and just outside the station restaurant and tabac, are seriously worth your while. Just beware the washrooms. They're free, but take my word for it and wait and pay 10 centimes in Vannes.
1) Crêperies, Vannes and Saint-Malo, October 28 and November 2, 2010:
The other Breton specialty that Marek and I felt compelled to sample was, of course, crêpes. We invested considerable time and effort in our selection of crêperies in both Vannes and Saint-Malo, and our efforts paid off spectacularly! We were particularly interested in finding crêperies with prix-fixe menus that included both cider and vegetarian options, and although our success was, on the surface, mixed, in both cases things worked out for the delicious, delicous best!
Our first crêperie supper was in Vannes, and we each had a 3-crepe menu with cider - in my case, despite no substitutions being available, there was no problem getting the ham left off the main-dish galette. I had a delicious emmental galette as an entrée, then a cheese, mushroom, and crème fraîche galette as the main dish, and finally a caramel and baked apple crêpe as dessert. OM NOM NOM. Marek, who had the same thing only with ham, and who had never had crêpes before, not even sad imitations outside Brittany, agreed. We were pretty big fans of the cider, too.
Our second crêperie supper was in Saint-Malo, and we had a hard time choosing a creperie there, particularly because come supper time, our midafternoon kouign amann snack was still weighing somewhat heavily upon us. But we were eventually drawn in by the giant Canadian and Québecois flags hanging both outside and inside the crêperie An Delenn. We were the only customers, so it took us some time to work up the courage to go in, but once we did, we were not disappointed! I had a delicious vegetable galette (and it had MANY veggies!) and then a delicious caramel crêpe for dessert, and again, OM NOM NOM. And again, we had cider, and generally basked in the ambiance of GIANT CANADIAN FLAG ON THE WALL. We actually wondered, although we didn't have the nerve to ask, if one of the owners is Québecois. Admittedly, Saint-Malo lays claim to a certain Canadian connection (where Canadian=French Canadian) as the birthplace of Jacques Cartier, who was the explorer who claimed what is now Quebec for France, but we felt that the Canadian flags in the crêperie were larger than necessary, if Jacques Cartier was the only Canadian connection. In any case, if you happen to be trying to choose a crêperie in Saint-Malo, we can definitely recommend this one!
Two nerdy sibling travellers:
2) Us, the matching set, in Nantes, in a former shipyard that has been reclaimed as a cool public space full of patrimoine industriel, October 27, 2010:
Marek and the patrimoine industriel, as taken by me.
Me and the patrimoine industriel, as taken by Marek.
1) Us, the matching set, on the bridge between Redon and Saint-Nicolas de Redon, and between the départements of Ille-et-Vilaine and Loire-Atlantique, October 29, 2010:
A questionable picture of me in Saint-Nicolas de Redon...
... and the corresponding, equally questionable one, of Marek in Redon!
And one dissertation project...
One week of hauling my luggage around Brittany at a demanding pace was not enough! I'll be back for much longer next year, doing the rest of the archival research for my dissertation. Some of that will be in Paris, at the Bibliothèque Nationale de France and the National Archives, but a lot of it will be in Brittany, and of that, the most substantial part will be in Rennes. Although Rennes did not exactly win me over this trip, I'll probably make it my base for further exploration, and for shorter trips to the departmental archives in the other departments of Brittany, and in the surrounding departments which also contain Breton materials. I'm thinking of renting or leasing a car for part of the time too, so I can really go out and explore all the tiny little villages that grew up around properties that eleventh-century nobles in Brittany donated to local, or not-so-local monasteries, for the redemption of their souls, and the souls of their parents and ancestors and descendants, and so that they could be neighbours with the monks and their patron saints.