Jamie and Scott Go Francing: Day 3

Monday, 19 May 2008

We woke up at 8:30 again this morning, hoping to avoid the hordes of tourists that would be descending on the Mont. After quickly getting ready in our plastic enclosures of bathrooms that reminded us of a motor home (with the leakiest shower in all of Europe) we walked up to the abbey at the top of the hill. It was a good thing we got there early as we could already see the lines of buses pulling into the parking lot.

The abbey itself was beautiful and almost completely empty at that hour. We had some of the rooms all to our selves. Hard to believe such a beautiful place even exists!!! We would have loved to see it in full use with monks all around.

We collected our bags and made the short walk down to the reception, grabbing a quick croquet monsieur on the way. I’m glad we hit the abbey when we did – the road was almost solid with ‘pilgrims’ heading up towards the abbey as we left. Even pulling a suitcase through the crowd was difficult…we were like salmon swimming upstream.

We loaded up Isabelle, stopping only briefly to take a few more photos as we went. Our mission for the day was to get to Dinan the long way round. We managed to find it, only making one wrong turn – who needs GPS? Jamie managed to pick right instead of left at the intersection heading into town so I got to drive right through the narrow and cobble stoned old centre of Dinan.

We checked into our rather plain, dorm like room at Hotel Arvor http://members.virtualtourist.com/m/658ac/1eca7/3/ then jumped on the Train Touristique around the city. Jamie has a strange obsession with these tourist trains. Next we walked down the STEEP and rather windy road to the old port and had an excellent 3 course meal on a patio overlooking the River Rance at Auberge Terre Neuve. We had planned on taking the tourist boat cruise from the port; however right across the road from the restaurant was a little place that rented boats.

Being the adventurous nautical types that we are we immediately signed up for a 3 hour tour (fortunately our ship wasn’t called the Minnow). We motored up river for an hour or so, passing through one lock and back again, and then back down river for another hour or so until we got to a little marina. Definitely more fun than the tour boat could have been. All that boating worked up a mean thirst, so after a bit of slightly aimless wandering we found a little pub in front of the basilica St Saveur where Jamie discovered that Hoeggarden is her favourite beer. Being so close we took a quick peak in the basilica before going to Chez la Mere Pourcel (http://www.chezlamerepourcel.com/anglais/index_gb.php) for a fantastic meal in a beautiful half timbered building in the heart of Dinan. We wandered around for another hour or so taking photographs of the town as the light slowly faded.

Dinan is a beautiful town – lots of medieval buildings, half-timbered houses and narrow cobbled streets, excellent food and friendly people make it one of our favourites in Brittany.

Pictures from Day 3: