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Published: November 10th 2016
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Before our visit, the only thing that I knew about Brittany, was that it was famous for crepes, and the name has had a lot of appeal to new parents in the last 30 years.
Our son Brad recently accepted a position as Chair of the English Department at ENSTA, a technical institute in Brest, Brittany, France.
We visited in November for the first time. Our travels took us on an evening flight from Philadelphia to Paris. We had a good connection to Brest, with the second flight leaving about 3 hours after our arrival in France, landing around noon at Brest airport. Brest has a beautiful, new airport. It is a town of about 100,000 people. I’d compare it to Allentown, Pennsylvania in size.
The name Brittany (little Britain) comes from colonization from Britain after the fall of the Roman Empire. The indigenous language of the area, Breton, is related to Welsh and Gaelic. Road signs are in English and in Breton.
Brittany juts out into the ocean, and strangely is located farther west than London. It is at the top of the Bay of Biscay. At the
bottom of the bay is Spain. The Gulf Stream brings warm Caribbean water to Europe keeping the climate in Brittany above freezing all year. As a result, hardier palm and banana trees grow there. We enjoyed lovely fall weather without rain. Each morning there was dew on the grass and fog over the water, which cleared by late morning.
Our son’s family lives in Plougastel Doualas, a suburb on a promontory across the bay from Brest. The view west to the bay is spectacular.
Most industry in Brest has to do with shipping and the Navy. As a result of the good harbor, the Germans commandeered it in WW II- The city was leveled by the Allies, so the almost all buildings are post-war. There is a very good aquarium in Brest, and a lovely botanical garden, but if you are looking for charm, Brest is not it.
Fortunately, there are plenty of other cities and towns in Brittany that are ridiculously charming. We visited Pont Aven, a “town of painters” attracting Gaugin and other artists. Disney couldn’t have created a more picture perfect French village, with several trout streams flowing by mills into a harbor. Vibrantly colored boats sat on the tidal flats while waiting to be refloated by the incoming tide.
In addition to art galleries, we were interested in the shops selling biscuits (cookies), and locally canned fish.
Quimper is a larger charming town featuring half-timbered houses, shops, and a bigger trout stream flowing into that harbor.
Sucino Castle, home of the Dukes of Brittany for hundreds of years, was worth visiting. The castle has been partially restored, after being stripped of wood and stone after the French revolution. One is impressed with the imposing size of the structure. What a sense of power it must have conveyed in the 16
th century!
We spent three nights in Trinite sur Mer, a French vacation area that I would compare to the Jersey shore. The hotel was ultra-charming - Le Lodge Kerisper. It sounds silly, but I would call the style of furnishing French farmhouse. Weathered bleached wood was featured. There is a picture perfect garden to stroll in with an apple tree with ripe apples. The hotel had a small heated outdoor pool, which we were unfortunately too busy to use.
The French economy is not supposed to be doing well, but you couldn’t tell it by the number and size of boats in the harbor. Sailing is more popular there than in the US. We particularly enjoyed seeing several racing yachts from the Jules Verne around the world competition. These are totally impractical catamarans, 100 or more feet in length. They are so wide that they require a tennis court size slip for docking. They sail as fast as a speedboat.
We dined on fish several nights there. The best restaurant, which we enjoyed twice was Le Surcouf. In the working person areas of Brittany, restaurants are inexpensive. But in the vacation areas, where Parisians go for holiday, prices are similar to such areas in the US.
Carnac is also nearby, a French Stonehenge, consisting of thousands of stones covering what I estimate is 100 acres. The stones date from around 4500 years ago. We’ve been to both, and I think Carnac is more impressive. Interesting that there is a famous Egyptian temple named Karnack.
We saw no Americans during our visit. Because of our son, we will be returning. We notice that there are some ferries that leave from Brittany and head to Cornwall, England. That may be part of our future travels.
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