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Published: March 24th 2008
Travel Tip #1: If you decide to go anywhere, read up on it a little bit. I mean, at least know where you’re going.
Being the adventurous exchange students that we are, and desirous to see as much of our host country as possible before we return home, we decided to take advantage of this long Easter weekend and book a trip to Brest. Being the assertive type-A student that I am, I agreed without question (i.e. without asking things like “where is it?” or “what is there to do there?”).
The first sign of trouble was when both of my host parents could not understand why we had chosen Brest, instead of another, more interesting city. Being a port city, I was informed that Brest had been almost completely demolished by the Allies in World War II, so there isn’t much to see except for a tower and a chateau. I figured, while there probably weren’t a lot of tourist attractions, it was worth seeing another Breton city.
Travel Tip #2: Always know where your hotel is in relation to whatever you want to see, especially on a holiday weekend.
Getting into Brest wasn’t hard at all. Bretagne has a wonderful regional train system, the TER, which is fairly frequent and cheap. We also managed to find a really cheap hotel that was, according to the advertisement, “not more than 1 km from the city!” We quickly discovered that “the city” referred to the city limits, not the city center, and that our hotel acted as a very nice backdrop to one of the Auto Routes next to a couple office buildings. In other words, it was in the middle of nowhere.
But no matter, we’re adventurous travelers and we will make the most of it.
Travel Tip #3: Be wary of rain, and sleet, and wind, and hail…especially when they come all at the same time.
I’m pretty sure this one doesn’t need much explanation.
Travel Tip #4: Don’t go to a place that has a limited holiday bus schedule, especially if you will be relying on the bus to get anywhere.
Unlike Rennes, Brest has no metro, so we had to rely solely on their bus system, which was by no means horrible. However, because our hotel was so far out while visiting on a holiday with restricted bus times, we had to get a little creative with our transportation…which usually meant walking.
We discovered that Brest had one of the biggest public aquariums in Europe, called Océanopolis, which we decided to visit. It was divided into three “pavilions,” Polar, Tropical, and Temperate, and had some really amazing fish, sharks, seals, penguins etc… Check out the pictures at http://picasaweb.google.com/collin.swan. That was a really cool experience, except for the fact that it was in the middle of nowhere and we spent an hour and a half trying to walk to it before finding the correct bus line. Fun times…
Travel Tip #5: Avoid fast food restaurants, especially in France, and even if they’re the only restaurants open.
Once again, no explanation is needed.
To finish on a positive note, while we were not able to make it inside the chateau, we did end up seeing Le Tour Tanguy, which is an ancient guard tower dating back to around 1400, that was turned into a museum. It had some really interesting tidbits of the history of Brest, including that its Naval Base was first created by Cardinal Richelieu, and that several Siamese Ambassadors had visited the city around the 1600s. There is a street named after them.
In the end, it wasn’t that bad of a trip after all.
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Carolyn
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Oy Collin...
Thank you for these very informative tips :) You crack me up, glad to hear you had an adventurous trip even if you had to get creative. I would like for you to come back to DC so we can take a trip to target or something, which has equally difficult bus scheduling. miss you!!!!