Wednesday, October 19 we went to the tourist information office hoping to find a walking tour, or at least a self guided walking tour. No such luck. We ended up walking around the Grand Place and the old area of town. I think that after almost 9 weeks of deciding what to do every day I’m getting burned out. Without the guidance of a walking tour we did the best we could.

After we had dinner I took some nighttime photos as we walked back to the hotel.

Today was our last in France and it has been a great 3 weeks here. Tomorrow we return to London to finish off the trip.

Tuesday, October 18 we left Bayeux and started the drive to Lille. We stopped in Honfleur on the way. It’s a beautiful harbor town, and like Bayeux did not get bombed during the war. The town has been inspiring painters for years. When we arrived and walked by the harbor a fishing boat had just come in with their large haul of scallops. We stopped to watch the process of getting them from the boat to the refrigerated truck.

We walked around the harbor and some side streets. This is a great town and I wish we had more time for it.

One big challenge we have been facing is that gas for the car is in short supply due to refinery strikes. The French love to strike. We haven’t had too much trouble finding gas, though we have seen stations that don’t have any. It got worse as we traveled north. Our luck was about to change. We filled up at about 3/4 tank to stay as full as possible. We weren’t too far from Lille and stopped to top off the tank before returning the rental car. The station had gas, but declined both of our credit cards. I don’t know why because we have used them since. We couldn’t find another station with gas, so we had to return it with only 3/4 tank of gas. There no telling how much they will charge us for it. I took a picture to verify the fuel gauge. Bye bye Fiat 500.

Monday, October 17 we did a self- guided walking tour of Bayeux. Midway through it we stopped at a restaurant we had been to in 2014 with our friends, Sarah & Dave, for lunch. It was as good as we remembered. When we went into the cathedral we ran into the Canadian couple who we spoke to for quite a while at Mont-Saint-Michel. It’s a small world.

After we finished our walking tour we went to the British/Commonwealth cemetery in Bayeux. It’s not nearly as big as the American cemetery, but it is just as moving.

Sunday, October 16 we drove to the Pegasus Memorial. The bridge was built in 1934 and was a major objective of the British in the opening minutes of the D-Day invasion. We toured the museum, where we learned all about the operation, and outside they had the bridge and other machinery, etc. used during the invasion.

We later went to a German cemetery in La Cambe. Under the large mound in the center are the remains of unidentified solders.

Saturday, October 15 we went on a 9 hour Overlord tour of D-Day sights. In 2014 we did a DIY version and going on this tour we saw many things I was unaware of before. We signed up for the all day Utah Beach and Omaha Beach tour, but they combined us with the Band of Brothers tour. It was a great. Our guide, Yannick, has been interested in D-Day and WWII since he was 14 years old and is very enthusiastic about his job. He really made history come alive. What we saw and heard was inspiring, tragic and emotional. They love Americans in Normandy and American flags are flying everywhere. They haven’t forgotten how we saved them. I’m sure it’s the same in the British and Canadian sectors.

Friday, October 14 and once again it’s time to move on. No matter how long a trip is there’s never enough time to see everything. I have enjoyed Brittany and wish I could have seen more. Another thing that made this stop extra nice was our apartment. It was so comfortable and had everything we needed.

On our drive to Bayeux, our base in Normandy, we made a stop at Le Mont Saint Michel. Many people go out of their way to get there and love it. It’s a pilgrimage site. We went there in 2014 at this very same time of year and we were disappointed. Or underwhelmed. Or less than impressed. It was very crowded and lined with souvenir shops and overpriced places to eat. It just felt a bit tacky. We had no desire to go back. But…it was on the way, so why not? Maybe we would feel differently this time. It was raining on the drive and when we arrived there. We got there just after 10:00 and were hoping we would beat the crowds. And tour buses. And school groups. We saw all that. It wasn’t looking good and we actually had a brief conversation while we were waiting for the shuttle about just leaving. But we had just paid for parking and we decided to stick it out. We got on the shuttle (after about a 25 minute wait) and made it to the island. Even with all the people there they seemed to be more disbursed after getting through the gate. The groups of kids were noisy, but we tried to avoid them as much as possible. It didn’t seem as tacky as it did before. We both decided we liked it much better this second time around.

We continued our drive to Bayeux and found our apartment. The location is great and it has secure parking. Other than that it’s very disappointing. We have been lucky to find moderately priced places to stay that were comfortable and always provided all or almost everything we needed. This place is lacking in so many things, and I suspect someone lives here normally. There’s a room that’s locked but has a large keyhole. It’s obviously a bedroom. The refrigerator is full of food and one shelf was left empty for us. There wasn’t a coffee maker, electric kettle or toaster. We definitely won’t be cooking here. Anyway, there’s nothing we can do about it so I just need to get over it. There are a number of restaurants just down the street from us, but being a Friday night and not having reservations we had trouble finding a place. We walked down a small street and found a place and were very happy with it. We both had delicious gallettes. Feeling full we walked back to the apartment, stopping on the way to make dinner reservations for Saturday night.

Thursday, October 13 we stayed in Dinan for the day. Thursday is market day and I’m a sucker for markets. It wasn’t the best market I’ve been to, but it wasn’t the worst either, so it was all good.

After the market we went to the tourist information office to inquire about walking tours. Nope, but we could do a self guided one. I think it must be the time of year because no one seems to have tours. We walked to the château located near the tourist office, but in October they don’t open until 1:30. We continued to walk until we reached the path that would take us up to the ramparts. We walked along them until we couldn’t go further. We got some great views.

It was raining off and on and by the time we made it back to the apartment in the afternoon we decided we were just going to relax the rest of the day. We had bought some food at the market and warmed it up for dinner. I think we needed a little down time and a rainy day is meant for that.

Wednesday, October 12 we went to St. Malo. When planning this trip I was torn between basing there or in Dinan and Dinan won out. Knowing that today might be the last dry day we have in a while we decided to go today instead of tomorrow. Wow, we loved it! I immediately started second guessing the decision to stay in Dinan. It has all the things I love; old buildings, history, the water…

We walked around the ramparts that surround the old center and got some great views.

We decided when we left to go back to Dinan that we had made the right decision for where to stay. Part of that is due to the great apartment we are in. We spent more time walking around our area of Dinan when we returned and saw some unexpected things, like a horse at the end of the street. We also stumbled across a park-like place where we saw goats, bunnies and a variety of birds.

Tuesday, October 11 after spending two nights in Vannes in southern Brittany, it was time to move north. After the nightmare of getting to where we were parked there was no way I wanted to drive the car back to our apartment, so we walked with our luggage to the car. Thankfully we pack light.

We stopped in Carnac on the way. Carnac has over 3,000 standing stones, the largest collection of such stones in the world. They believe the stones were erected around 3300 B.C., though some may date back to as early as 4500 B.C. They stretch for about 4 kilometers and we concentrated on just one section. The large stone field is fenced off so we walked around it. Many of the stones are in rows.

We left the stones and went to the beach. I imagine it’s quite busy here in the summer, but this time of year it was quiet. We enjoyed some time there on this beautiful sunny day.

We headed north to Dinan and met our host for the apartment we rented at the parking garage. We are staying in the medieval part of town on a pedestrian street. She showed us around this fantastic place, old and with character, but modern at the same time. She provided many extra touches to make our stay comfortable.

We walked around looking for a good place for dinner and ended up going to a restaurant that is a one minute walk from our door. We both had delicious scallop crepes. Mine was with mushrooms and Jim’s was with leeks. Yum! I forgot take pictures.

Sunday, October 9 we relocated to Vannes in southern Brittany. On the way we made two stops. First we went to Guérande. We loved this town! Even on a Sunday it was lively. We enjoyed walking through the streets and admiring the beautiful buildings. Before we left we had lunch outdoors in front of a large church. Crepes of course because Brittany is where they come from. It’s too bad we didn’t have more time there. I don’t know why, but I only took a few pictures.

Next we went to Rochefort-en-Terre, another one of France’s Beautiful Villages. I can see why, but we enjoyed Guérande more.

We arrived in Vannes and dropped our stuff off at our apartment. It’s on a small street in the old town and we couldn’t park there, so we followed the hosts directions to the free parking lot about an 8 minute walk away. Unfortunately he didn’t know about some road construction and I’ll just say it was a very stressful challenge to get there. Very stressful. We are only here for two nights and we decided the car was staying parked until we leave. The studio apartment was great, much better than a hotel room. It had everything…except toilet paper and hand soap. We didn’t even notice that until we got back from the grocery store. Thankfully we had bought some TP when we realized there wasn’t going to be enough for our stay in another apartment and I had grabbed an extra little hand soap from a hotel we had stayed in. There was dish soap in the kitchen, so we used that. The host of this place was very attentive and when I told him about lacking those necessities when we left he was very apologetic. He said the cleaning team must have forgotten them. I would stay there again.

On Monday we went to the Vannes tourist information office hoping for a walking tour. They didn’t have one, but gave us a map with 3 self guided walks, which we did. She also suggested we take the little tourist train that many French towns have because they provided commentary. We did that too, and it was a total waste of time. We both thought Vannes seems like a nice place, but it’s hard to tell what it’s like the rest of the time because Sundays and Mondays are typically slow days in France. We struggled to find anywhere to eat and what we did find wasn’t very satisfying.