Holiday 2014 Part 2: Home from home in Brittany

Brittany is my favourite part of France - we have been on holiday here many times. I think this is because it reminds me of Ireland - it's very green - it rains quite a lot as we discovered this week - and there's all that Celtic culture.  It is our dream to one day buy a house on the South coast along from La Baule, which is where the weather is best.  So we travelled there again last week - me, husband, daughter and her schoolfriend, carefully vetted by us as being a. a keen reader and b. not a fussy eater.

Allotments seen from the city above - very green as you can see.

This time we stayed in Dinan, just south of St Malo where the ferry comes in from Portsmouth.  We stayed in a gite overlooking the Rance river.  Not the best holiday home we have ever had - uncomfortable bed and the shower could only four dribbly jets of water. But a great location, just after the end of the main road in Dinan port, overlooking the river. It was quiet without being too isolated with a little bar/restaurant between us and the river.  Fifteen minute walk to the town itself, a pleasant stroll along the port, past privately owned boats and quayside restaurants and then a steep climb up the hill, occasionally pausing for breath at little art galleries and craft shops. Dinan is a beautiful preserved medieval town with a long history but, true to form, we didn't really bother finding out anything about this and concentrated on our usual holiday pursuits: eating, lazing around and reading books.  There was also a cycle path running along the river just outside our gite and I went on a couple of bike rides with my husband, a very unusual occurrence as I go much too slowly for him and won't ride far at home because of my fear of traffic.

The girls did their usual stuff - talking till after midnight, sleeping till ten, two hours of 'getting ready', then outside to link up with the bar's free wi-fi so they could catch up with Snapchat and Facebook and 'update their stories' with holiday pictures.  I wasn't terribly pleased to find out about the free wi fi and wanted a total break from the internet.  So I didn't bother. But the girls are lost without it.  One day when it was raining heavily they even stood outside sheltering under the restaurant's canopy so they could connect.  At least they found time for reading - their current favourite being the 'Divergent' series by Veronica Roth. I watched the DVD of the first book with them and quite enjoyed it.  It was better than 'The Hunger Games' anyway.  They also liked eating crepes and exploring the market.  I quite like this necklace and bracelet with the Breton symbol which my daughter bought and might borrow it sometimes.

So a good holiday, even though the weather was a bit mixed. We got to the beach in St Cast one day and sat outside most evenings to eat even if we had to wear jumpers and shelter from light rain under the big umbrella.  And we had some lovely meals out.  My favourite was a little restaurant on the quayside called LesTerre-Neuvas where we sat out side for lunch on our final day when the sun shone.  This meal below cost 16 euros and was absolutely delicious: crevettes roses with mayonnaise; scallops and salmon gratin, and something called Assiette Gourmand (greedy plate?) with cassis sorbet, chocolate mousse and far breton - a kind of egg custard with prunes.

Am I smarter than a 13 year old? Answering Tricky Questions

 

Fashion Girl dragged herself away from the rubbish television she watches and caught a bit of the news on Monday. Usually she shows little interest in current affairs preferring shows like 'Don't Tell the Bride' and 'Come Dine with Me' or, even worse, Jeremy Kyle if I don't catch her and turn it off.  I prefer it when she sticks to kids' shows like the quiz show 'Are you Smarter than a 10 year old?' which are vaguely educational. On Monday she asked me what a prefix was when watching this programme.  Surely she knows: the last time she accused me of being 'unsensitive', one of my many failings according to her, I responded by advising her of the correct prefix.  Anyway I digress... 

The news on Monday was of course entirely dominated by the death of Mrs Thatcher. Fashion Girl, as a feminist in training, wondered why I wasn't so keen on her.  After all she was a woman who ran the country which surely was a good thing.  And so she asked a very simple question: 'Why was she bad?' It proved more tricky to answer than I'd thought. Explained how she didn't care much for the poor - FG accepted that. that but she didn't really see why selling off national companies was a problem.  Why shouldn't Richard Branson run the train service to London if he makes a good job of it?   Love having a teenager to talk to: it makes me question and reconsider my own convictions.  Then tried explaining how Mrs T encouraged people to pursue individual wealth and success.  Again FG saw no problem with this until I explained that I felt she encouraged people to be selfish and not care about the rest of society.  Not sure I explained it very well but I had a go.

What she found most shocking was that Margaret Thatcher was the first female Prime Minister and that there hasn't been another one since.   Ok so I didn't like Mrs Thatcher, but I do admire her achievement as a woman.  Let's hope the women of the FG's generation have more success in getting to the top in politics than we have.