Rennes
We arrived around 6.30pm and spent an hour driving around trying to find
a hotel with a vacancy, asking at five without any luck. Eventually we
headed north out of the central city and found not-so-plush but perfectly
decent lodgings in the Auberges St Martin. Going out for dinner, we
walked into the old town, which wasn't so far but seemed like a long
way since we were hungry.
In a larger city like Rennes — the capital of Brittany, with 200,000
people — getting around was trickier than in the small towns.
There was a scale gap in between our large road map of Brittany and the small
central-city maps in our guidebooks, and we had to deal with traffic,
complicated parking, and one-way streets. (We had similar problems in
Brest and the outskirts of St Nazaire.)
Camilla stopped to check her email in a cybercafe, while I took photos.
We had dinner in a pizza restaurant, then wandered around the old city
for a while before walking back to our auberge.
Thursday 21st June
old buildings in the city centre
A little more confident about how to get around now, we drove into town.
At the information centre we looked at a display on the architecture of
Rennes, then got cakes and coffee from a patisserie.
We drove south to an "Eco musee", braving freeways and traffic, but we
got there at 12 just as it had shut for lunch, and it wasn't opening
again till 2. So we gave up on that and decided to leave Rennes —
but first we had to spend 30 minutes on the orbital getting back to the
north of the city.
Next: Mont Saint-Michel
Previous: megaliths near St Just
Up: Brittany
