A trip to Northern France (Part 1)

Remember when September happened 300 years ago? Yeah, me too. Now it’s almost November and France is going back into lockdown, so I think the best course of action is to reminisce about our big trip we were very luckily able to take this year. I’ll be honest, I’ve been putting off posting about it because I still feel guilty about traveling during a pandemic (although it was allowed here in France at the time), but I want to remember the fun times we had this year, so here it is.

The first leg of our trip involved us all (Cindi & Orlando and Jonathan & me) taking a train from Aix up to Rennes, a town in the Northwest of France near the English Channel. The train ride was a long one, but pretty quiet so it was nice. Once we arrived to Rennes and walked to our hotel, we were able to take in a few of the sights. We grabbed some coffee and checked out some of the original half-timbered homes that are still around. None of the old buildings seemed to have a level beam on them and jutted out over the roads at all different angles. There were quite a few old churches to check out on our walk too.

Our second day in Rennes, we explored a huge garden/park area in town. There was an aviary, a rose garden with at least 200 different types of roses, and nice sitting areas. It was a really beautiful area to walk through and look at all the sculptures and flowers. For lunch we had galettes, which are crêpes from the Brittany region of France. They were much more crispy!

We eventually picked up our rental car and made our way to St. Malo, a town right on the water that has some islands accessible only during low tide. We ended up eating dinner at a cool little bar. We walked along the old wall of the city around sunset and then called it a night.

I’ll post more about St. Malo and the rest of our trip soon. It was really a nice break and so great to be able to see some of France before we leave. Thanks for reading and if you haven’t already done so, go vote! All the cool people are doing it!