Friday, May 15 and Saturday May 16, 2009
As is usually the case with European flights, we flew overnight from DC to Paris. But in the interest of cheap tickets we got the shaft on connections. Since we were flying Northwest it would have been the sensible thing to fly DC to Amsterdam, Amsterdam to Paris. Alas, no. Instead we flew DC to Minneapolis and then enjoyed 9 confined hours in economy class. But to tell the truth, the flights weren't bad and we arrived in Paris tired but in good spirits. Waited in line for a bit, got our rental car and hit the road. Had a little snag with the GPS in the airport and took a very interesting detour through a parking garage, but once we were out on the open road we cruised into the most incredible country side. Pastoral and verdant, we were totally mesmerized.
After a couple hours our eyes began to droop and we opted to pull off for a roadside nap. 45 minutes later we were back on the road and Ben was feeling confident he could make the rest of the drive without falling asleep and disturbing the peaceful country side by running off the road. Three and a half hours after starting out we rolled into Rennes and thanks to the kookey GPS lady we found Alyce and Dave without incident. (FYI - I'm going to co-opt Alyce's acronyming and call them A&D from here on out).
I rang the buzzer on their apartment expecting a happy scream to greet me and I was not disappointed! My "we're here" was followed by a mini-shriek from Al and "we're coming down." Fast forward through the hugs and the hellos and the not so quiet babbling began. As Alyce's own post on our arrival points out, catching up on nine months isn't easy! But we forged on valiantly, Alyce and I babbling all the way through the car parking and up to their apartment, even through the delicious snacks (locally grown strawberries, herb crusted cheese, perfect french bread and incredible chocolate deliciousness!) they had waiting for us from the morning's market. After our bellies were full we headed to the hotel to settle in to our hotel with Dave and Ben walking behind Alyce and I, chatting to one another, not even trying to keep up with the rapid fire sentence swapping going on ahead of them.
After settling into our hotel we headed back to meet A&D for a quick walk around Rennes and then a delicious dinner at a local creperie.
If you haven't figured this out already, this trip was intended to be food-centric and A&D started us out with a bang! Savory gallettes with goat cheese, meats, creme fraiche...utterly delicious! And it only got better. For dessert, sweet crepes with the salty caramel Alyce had so thoroughly talked up. We couldn't believe our tastebuds. Just writing about it I'm salavating for more.
We enjoyed our dinner and our catching up so much that we didn't want it to end, but we'd been up for many, many hours and so after our delicious dessert we headed back to the hotel for some much needed sleep.
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