Our time in France – Part I

We spent our first night in France out by the Charles De Gaulle Airport. Our flight arrived in late afternoon, and we had to get through customs, etc. So we found our hotel, got settled a bit, and had dinner. Maya wanted to shower and go to bed, but Ted and I wanted to try to stay awake a bit. We took a walk, expecting it to be all airport hotels and such, but there was a lovely little village right by the hotel, Roissy en France. There was a charming street with bustling cafes (we wished then that we had not eaten at the hotel, though the food there was fine), a little park, and an old church. If there was one theme to our trip and the sights we saw, it would be ‘Old Church’. There were not many days on our trip that did not include at least one old church. This picture is me and Maya the following morning, taking a walk to see the village before we went back to the airport to pick up our car, ready for the long trip out to the West Coast of Brittany. The church is the Eglise Saint Eloi, and parts of it may date back to the Middle Ages, though the rest is likely 17th or 18th century.

The village was a farming village, in economic decline, when the airport was built nearby. It is a lovely little village with buildings that remind me of the movie, Before Sunset, and the apartment building where Julie Delpy’s character lived.

The following day, we went back to the airport to rent a car (which took quite a while, for some reason the person in front of us took about 45 minutes), then we drove out to the coast of Brittany.  We stopped for lunch at a lovely little cafe in a town called Caen (pronounced Kahn).  We had no idea where to eat, but we were hungry.  We found a place to park and walked down the street, where we were propositioned by a man on the street, asking us if we wanted to try his restaurant.  It was a little husband and wife place.  The wife did the cooking, while the husband ran the front of the restaurant.  They cooked two items a day, and you had your choice.  The wife was from Djabouti, which borders Ethiopia and Somalia.  The food was very similar to Ethiopian, which we love.  We all chose the lamb curry over quinoa, which was delicious.  Then it was back into the car for the rest of our drive.

I’ve numbered the map above. Our hotel was on the coast of the Atlantic Ocean, in the village of Plougonvelin – 1 on the map, at a place called Pointe Saint Mathieu. It was a lovely little place, and across the street from the hotel was the ruins of a medieval abbey, said to once hold remains of the apostle Matthew, and as the area is a busy shipping route, several light houses.

The ocean side of the abbey, and a lighthouse.

A neighboring house and barn.

Maya and me, inside the ruins of the church.

A view of the ruins and 2 lighthouses, from a bit down the road, where we went on a walk one morning.  The pillar to the right of the church / lighthouses is a small monument to those who died in WWI.

Ted, in his running clothes, from the WWI monument.  Behind him is the ruins and the lighthouses.

French draft horses in a field nearby.

We call these orange flowers California poppies, and they are our state flower.  I suspect they have a different name in France.  They made me feel right at home.

I loved the flowers growing on the stone walls in front of a house near our hotel.

It was a truly beautiful place. There was not much to do there, you had to get in the car to see things, but it was very picturesque, and I could kind of imagine retiring there. Absolutely lovely.

More of our trip in another post. I just wanted to show you the beautiful place we stayed our first few days in France.