That car is definitely EN FEU...

Orientation in Vannes

I got to IES at 1:45pm, and we promptly went to our first chateau: Château de Suscinio. It was pretty impressive, as it had a moat around it, as well as some of the old floors that still remained. The tiled floor of each room had a theme: flora, fauna, coats of arms, geometric patterns, etc. They were well-preserved, considering the castle was from the 13th century or so, if I'm not mistaken. From the castle turrets (I think), we saw the ocean, and made a quick visit down to la plage (the beach) before it started really raining in huge, heavy drops.

Here are some photos:

Ye olde tiled floors

Un bateau sur la plage

Stained-glass windows

The courtyard (behind me was a lake, then the ocean, but I didn't take very good photos)

After the château, we headed to our hotel, which was a beautiful hotel in Vannes. I roomed with Lauren, the only other girl from Santa Clara. We didn't know each other before this, and have become fast friends. It's great. In lieu of going out on the town, as some people did, we ended up staying up until 1 or 1:30am just chatting and watching weird French tv. We found The Parent Trap playing on tv (which, believe me, made my day) until we calmed down enough to realize it had been dubbed in Italian! Seeing as how we were on the opposite side of France, I still have no explanation for that...

On Friday, we had the busiest day. Breakfast is my new favorite meal (okay, every meal is my favorite) because they have plain yogurt with prunes and apricots, baguette with jambon (ham) and fromage, peaches, amazing orange juice and grapefruit juice, and let's not forget... petit pain au chocolat (croissant w/ chocolate inside). I was SO full, but we definitely worked it off. We took a bus to l'île aux Moines which is probably the cutest place I have ever been to. It was a cross between the movie "The Holiday" and an Anthropologie catalog, and IES paid for all of us to rent les vélos (bikes) to bicycle all around the kind of hilly island. IES also packed us up with les pique-niques that we could put in our paniers (bike baskets) and eat whenever we felt like it. The weather was absolutely amazing: it was cold enough to bike up some crazy hills without sweating too much, then warm enough to have a picnic on an old stone dock (probably not what they called it) in a t-shirt and sunglasses. Thank God for layering! I was so full from breakfast that I only ate an apple when everyone else ate lunch, but not to worry, we all ended up eating twice, because IES gave us potato chips, an apple, a Mars bar, a HUGE baguette sandwich (pic below), and a cucumber, raisin, and couscous salad... just in case they thought we'd starve. After seeing the whole island, the group of 6 or so of us stopped by a local bar to rest and try some kir. It was the first time I've had it, and absolutely delicious-- and only 1E30!

Some photos from orientation day 2:

The view from the port at île aux Moines

Some beautiful Breton cross

This sandwich was the size of my forearm! And yes, I ate it all...

More bateaux

So after we returned from l'île aux Moines, the bus dropped us off in downtown Vannes, so those who wanted could do some shopping. Both Lauren and I needed toiletries (because my shampoo exploded in my luggage, which got everywhere-- even inside my contact case, somehow) so we made a little trip to Monoprix (like an expensive Target). And by "little trip" I mean "big excursion", because this involved walking up and down the main street twice, going into the tourist information shop (Thank you France for having these and the cleanest public restrooms always obvious and available) and finding a map, and THEN setting out on our journey, only to discover that Vannes is too cool for street signs; they only put a small panneau on every other big street, and it's on a wall, not at the intersection. We finally found the Monoprix and spent a good 30 minutes smelling shampooing (which is "sham-pwangh", btw) and après-shampooing and finally settled on the perfect stuff. We do want to smell French, after all. We knew dinner was at 7:30pm, and armed with our map, we went back down the hill to the city center, looked at our map, and realized that the hotel was #17 on the map: up near Monoprix, but on the opposite side. We walked a good 20 minutes (until it was about 7:05 or 7:10) and amused ourselves with LOTS of Franglais until we realized that we weren't in a very normal neighborhood... and oh wait, the hotel's I7 on the map, not 17... and so we speed-walked the 45 minutes across the entire city back to the hotel. We were a little late for dinner, but no one had been served yet. Only one thing was waiting at our seats: kir! It couldn't have been more necessary!

After biking many km around the island and then walking who knows how many km around Vannes and to the hotel, we capped off our night with what else? Walking BACK into downtown Vannes for a night out! Eight or so of us settled into a small bar, where we ordered drinks. I ordered one called a cerveau, because it was cheap and sounded interesting. BAD IDEA. While I had known cerveau means "brain" in English, I didn't think it would actually resemble one! Consisting of clotted Bailey's, grenadine, and most likely some other type of alcohol, it was the foulest thing I've had yet, and the two sips I had were definitely not worth the 3, 80 Euros I paid, but at least I can say it made for a good story!

I'll write about Saturday and Sunday tomorrow, because this is long and I need to go to bed. My own rentrée is demain matin (tomorrow morning)!