With some expert advice from our wwoof hosts we headed to Brittany, the far North West region of France. The first town we went to was Roscoff. It was a very quaint fishing town whose harbors were far bigger than the town center. Brittany is the region that crepes are from, and as soon as we found out that we could get them made from buckwheat, which is gluten free, we ate them for at least two meals a day. While we were there we celebrated Lisa's birthday with a seaside crepe picnic lunch and a crepe dinner in a creperie.
After Roscoff we went to St Malo, which was much larger and much more touristy. The coolest thing about St Malo was the beach. At high tide there was no beach, the water came all the way up to the city walls. At low tide the beach was a quarter mile wide and you could see the water had come up the city walls 20ft. There was a pool on the beach that was refilled every time the tide came in. Lisa went swimming laps even though it was freezing.
While there, we took a day trip to Mont Saint Michel, which is a beautiful island topped with a huge cathedral just off the Normandy coast. Well sometimes its an island, at low tide you can walk to it!
We had planned on seeing the Normandy D'Day beaches the next day but a train strike made it impossible, so we skipped it and headed straight for Paris. We arrived in Paris and piled on one of the suburban trains at rush hour that was packed so tight you could not breath because they were only running a fraction of the trains they would normally run. We met Sylvain, another one of Lisa's dads friends, who kindly offered us a place to stay. His flat was in a suburb, but it is not like an American suburb, it is still very much the city, just not technically Paris.
Lisa wanted to get her hair cut and found an academy online where she could get it done for free by students. After almost five hours she was finished with about a foot cut off. The snoody director told her that she could not just get a trim, it was not enough practice for the students.
With her new spunky hair cut we did our usual walking around every neighborhood possible. We saw a lot more pictures of Jesus at the Louvre and saw the many porn shops and strip clubs that surround the Moulin Rouge. We ate a couple of very nice meals out with Sylvain and I dragged Lisa around the city at night to get pictures.
After a few days we had had enough being packed into subways and trains and planned on heading south to climb. We went shopping and bought a cheap tent that pops up in 2 seconds! The train strike continued, and continued to be a pain in our ass. Our original train was cancelled and we were put on a different train that had a few transfers. We got off the train at our first transfer, which as the crow flies was actually very close to where we had planned to climb (and camp), and I swear it was about to snow. We went inside and found that our next leg had be cancelled and we would have to be re routed again, this time through the Marseille, then head back north into the mountains. We took this as a sign and got on the Internet and found some climbing further south, just outside of Marseille in the Calenques. Marseille was a dump (literally, as due to the strike trash was no longer being collected and accumulated mountains on the street.) I don't think it would have been much better anyway though.
The Calenques and the town of Cassis where we camped however were beautiful. Perfect limestone mingling in crystal turquoise waters. The only problems were that the wind never stopped blowing the entire time we were there and it was a solid 2 hour hike from the campsite to the climbing. Due to these two factors we did not get all that much climbing in, but we were happy spending a few day in such a beautiful place anyway!
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