March 30
Since the weather for today was rainy, we postponed our trip to Mont St. Michel until tomorrow. It’s still supposed to be cloudy and rainy but there’s a possibility that weather will clear later in the day. We’ll keep our fingers crossed.
So, we needed a plan B. After breakfast, Peter searched the internet for someplace to go and found a couple of small chateaux nearby. Since they were less than 30 minutes away, we decided to check them out. We made it to the first town of Vitre in only about 15 minutes but ran into our first challenge quickly thereafter. The road on which we needed to turn was blocked off, so we made a few turns to try and get the GPS to reroute us. After driving around, a subdivision for 10 minutes we ended right back at the closed road. But then we noticed that people were driving on it so we though, what the heck, if the locals can do it so can we. So, Peter drove around the do not enter sign and made the left turn. Well….turns out that the town center (where the chateau is located) was closed for we’re not sure what. All the access roads to this main road were closed and there were barricades on all of the curbs. People were lined up with their umbrellas along the street. That’s when we realized that there might be some kind of parade going on…oops. We just kept driving to get out of town but got stuck behind a tow truck that was clearing the streets of parked cars. That’s when we realized it was Good Friday so maybe it was some type of passion play. Anyway, we scratched that chateau off the list and headed to the second, Chateau des Rochers which was only another 15 minutes away. We got there without problem to find no cars in the lot and the door closed. The sign said it was supposed to be open, but we think Good Friday got in our way. So, we scratched that Chateau off the list as well.
Then we decided to head to the larger city of Rennes, which was only about 30 minutes away. That’s when we ran into our third challenge of the day…. we were scary low on gas. When we left the house, we had about 100km worth of gas but in all the driving we had already done that morning we didn’t see a single gas station. We thought that when we hit the main road on our way to Rennes, we’d see something…. nope. So, we turned the GPS back on and told her to find us a gas station. In the meantime, the warning light goes on and since the owner’s manual is in French, we have no idea how many liters we have left. Now we’re starting to panic just a little, especially when the GPS says it’s still 15 minutes before we hit a gas station. Seriously, how is it possible not to have any gas stations for 100 km??? We finally got there just as the warning bell is beeping like crazy. You could almost hear the gas tank guzzling the fuel as we filled it up.
Our to-do list in Rennes consisted of finding Lynn a new pair of jeans (hers had started to tear after the soaking at Chambord), get a SIM card for Peter’s phone, find a place to print/scan a few documents and, if possible, do laundry. We got super lucky and stumbled into a mall where Lynn found a pair of jeans (not her favorite style and too long but no holes so they were keepers). The salesperson at the store pointed us in the direction of a phone store where we got a SIM card that is good for all of Europe. We’re very excited about that as some of you may remember the nightmare we had on our first European adventure when we had to get a new SIM card in every country. It has 5GB of data for 14 days which should be plenty, but we needed it for 4 weeks. So, we bought another activation which we’ll use when this one runs out. It only cost 50 euro for the 4 weeks and since we spent $100 in the first 3 weeks on data, we think this will work in our favor.
The phone guy gave us the name of a place where we could print/scan Lynn’s documents, so we turned on the GPS and headed into the center of Rennes and another errand was checked off the list. The only thing we didn’t do is laundry, but we decided that we had done enough boring stuff for the day. So, we headed to the town of Dinan, about 45 minutes away. We’re so glad we did because it was a very cute old town. We stopped at the main church but Good Friday service was going on, so we just peeked in and left. Most of the restaurants were closed (it was 4pm and most don’t open after lunch until 7pm) but we finally found one and enjoyed a delicious late lunch/early dinner of crepes. That is a specialty in Breton, and we’ve been looking forward to it since we got to France.
Afterward we walked to the Castle. It was built in the early 14th century and is in remarkable good condition. There are no furnishings or decorations, but it was nice to tour it all the same. Here are some pictures from google. Castle of Dinan
Then it was a little over an hour back to our stone farmhouse where we took a wrong turn and met all the farm’s cows. There were quite a few so now we’ve met the girls who gave up their milk for us.
As you can see, it wasn’t the most exciting day but we had a few laughs along the way and the sun came out in the afternoon, so life is good.
Tomorrow night we’re staying in a place near St. Malo and are hoping for a better internet connection so we can upload photos. Thanks for your patience. We’ll chat again soon.