Bretagne, the Val-Andre: June 20-29, 2007

My new little Honda FiFi will soon have a proper Sylvia bumper sticker – it reads, “Coeur de Breizh” which means Bretonne at Heart. Indeed, there is everything of a homecoming when the rolling farmlands of Brittany replace the Parisian landscape out the window of the TGV.

I managed the rental car exit of the city of Rennes and found my way to the Val André apartment, utterly enraptured the moment the sea came into view. I think it feels like arriving at Salisbury, where I visited my maternal grandparents so many summers in my childhood. The salt air, the wind, the clouds born of the maritime clime all take me to a place of family and roots and I feel home. Home has been a tenuous concept for me more than once in my life, but especially this year, so the feeling is one I cherish.

The ten days in my idyllic home by the sea fall into a routine of morning walk up the promenade de la digue to the boulangerie where I secure my daily bread – a demie-baguette, I discover for the single – and a butter croissant. This bread, for the uninitiated, is baked that morning on the premises and still warm when it hits my breakfast table on the balcony overlooking the sea beside my freshly brewed café. This dear ones, is breaking the fast. Bring in the homemade raspberry jam from Marie-Claire, and you have one happy camper. I walk the trail up the bluff mid-morning to sit on the bench high above the sea, or back to the post office or to the Friday market for fresh fruits and veggies, olives, honey, all local.



Christine and Marylise's cousins, Marie-Claire and Jean invited me to lunch Saturday, which turned into an afternoon drive along the cost to the port of Dahouet and an hour and a half hike along the coastal path, followed by supper. I stopped at the florist in the Val André on my way to take along a bouquet as a hostess gift, enjoying the interchange with the florist and watching her wrap the bouquet for a gift. In a stroke of delightful luck, their son Jean-Jacques and his wife Nathalie and their 6 year old Briac are up from Rennes for the weekend. I first knew Jean-Jacques as an infant in arms when I spent the IU Honors summer with the Lessart family in 1969.

Sunday after Mass at the Pléneuf church, I joined the Lefebvre family again for Sunday dinner, taking a bottle of burgundy red wine for Jean-Jacques and cider for Jean since it was their feast day, the St. Jean June 24, cherries for Nathalie, chocolates for Marie-Claire, caramels for Briac. We drove to the beach of St. Pabu hoping to get some char-sailing action for the boys – this is a 3 wheeler with a sail on the beach at low tide – but the rain and cold had shut the place down. It is interesting to note that as Brittany is blessed with much wind, the Bretons have invented diverse ways to turn it into electricity, and into fun. There are kite-surfers, sailboarders, char-sailers, windsurfers – endless variations of wind, water, and speed.



We drove the cost to the Cap Frehel as a sad alternative to sport, and ended the day with a Sunday supper of crêpes. Only crepes. One with butter and sugar, one with raspberry jam, one with powdered chocolate and butter, one with lemon marmalade. Sugar coma.



Monday morning when I am deciding whether to seek fresh bread or be happy with the remains of yesterday, the doorbell rings. No one knows who I am or that I live here, so it was a mystified and slightly apprehensive Sylvia who answered. A beaming Marie-Claire greets me with, “How long will it take you to pack an overnight bag?” I protest that she and Jean should already be on the road on their vacation; Jean is picking raspberries and wants me to come with them to Brest. My protests are overcome and we are on the way on the J & M-C vacation special. Drive first, look at a map and decide where to go later.