To megaliths and boats!

Saturday, May 23, 2009

Bonjour!

An absolutely AMAZING day! Up and out about 8:30 a.m., and headed to the Port de Vannes for the Golfe Morhiban to see about cruises. We’d missed the 8 a.m. cruise, and decided instead, to head to Carnac and the megaliths and come back for the cruise which left at 2 p.m. in the afternoon. I’d even taken shorts with us, because there was blue sky when we started out, but it quickly clouded up – and started to RAIN! Found a fun place to stop for breakfast – a shop with all sorts of traditional Bretagne foods and “stuff” – including a great bakery! (Although WHY does it seem like most pastries here have PRUNES in them?!) We got their mini-breakfast, which included jus d’orange, hot drinks (café noir for R and chocolat chaud for me) and croissants for R and a tarte citron (which was delicious!) for me. As Robert plotted our route to Carnac, I poked around in the shop and found a few fun things to bring home. Our first sight was called the “alignment” and it is an incredible arrangement of standing stones/rocks – goes for row after row, sometimes 11 rows deep, and then runs again for hundreds of yards! Had a nice hike to the geant (giant) rock; weather not too bad, but as we got closer to Carnac, it started raining harder. And where were our umbrellas? Why, safe and warm and dry in our hotel room, of course; where else would they be? The alignment is really beautiful, and in the off-season, they open the fences to let people walk through them; very smartly, the fences are closed during the high season (which we’re in now). Headed then to Locmariaquer and took a very soggy walk through the main site past the great broken menhir to the Table of the Marchand tumulus; tried to shatter and/or scramble brains by not clearing it properly on the way out …OUCH! There are some wonderful carvings on one wall and the ceiling; hopefully they’ll reproduce from R’s photographs. We decided to head back at this point, as we wanted to pick up the umbrellas before heading out for our cruise.

Also needed food…..so, voila, drove past a McDonald’s and decided to stop…which must have been what everyone in this part of Brittany was thinking too! Packed with people! I went to get a table; R went to get the food. Why, I’m not sure…however, I noticed that there was an awful lot of head shaking going on in his direction, and when he came back to the table, I found out why! I had a Happy Meal of my very own! (Is that even legal if you’re over 10 years of age?!) Instead of asking for a “Big Mac Menu”, he asked for a “Number 1” … which they don’t even HAVE here … hence, the happy meal! [Editor’s note: Everyone knows that McDonald’s menu is the same all over the world, so I never bothered to look at the menu board until it was too late. No Number 1! Why, you may ask, if Margaret speaks French and I do not, did she send me to order the food? Good question! – RJB] Sent him back for a Big Mac…although the “prize” in the Happy Meal had a Thierry Henry football card and tiny jersey, so not a total loss! (If you don’t know, Thierry Henry is a French football (ie. Soccer) player.)
Laughed a lot over the meal!!

Back to the hotel, picked up the umbrellas and back out for the port. It had stopped raining (of course!) by now, and was even showing signs of brightening up! Our cruise went first to two places (including Conleau, so we could have caught the boat right in front of our hotel!) on the coast to pick up passengers. Then we headed to L’ile d’Arz. More passengers; we were getting fuller by this time. We then were scheduled for a two hour cruise of the gulf. What we hadn’t bargained on – and what we hadn’t really known! – was that today, Saturday, was the grand parade of boats for the Week of the Gulf! As R said, it was truly AWESOME (that which inspires awe; a word we use very carefully, as we are over 14 years of age…) There is a very strong tidal current at one point in the gulf, and boats were heading down the current, and then out into one of the larger bays – and I’m NOT exaggerating when I say there were THOUSANDS of boats of all descriptions! I’ve posted some of the pictures – big boats with sails, little boats with oars, kayaks, canoes, catamarans – seemed like ANYTHING that floated was somehow included in this parade! There were boats from France, England, Holland and Germany. And our boat was able to just run in circles and watch! The rigging on some of the boats, R says is very traditional, although he doesn’t know what they’re called. We watched the parade for almost two full hours – thinking that it was NEVER going to end! After that, our boat turned and needed to retrace its steps back to l’Isle d’Araz, and then the two coastal stops…but WOW, what chaos – everywhere! Once the boats had left the strong current and headed out into the larger bay, apparently the wind died down, as many of the sailing vessels were either still or people were having to row them! What a sight! Some of those people may be rowing all NIGHT! We had a very difficult time getting back to our various stops, as apparently sail boats have priority over power boats! But some of these sail boats weren’t moving at all! Actually great fun, and fortunately we had a terrific captain, so no problems – just took an hour longer than the normal tour, but wow, what memories!

Now back at the hotel, relaxing before dinner. We did screw up, though, as the fancy restaurant here where I promised Robert dinner tonight (if I could have pizza last night!) is fully booked! So, we’re going to have to find something else…

More later!
Much love,
m