Our rainy Purim/Easter in Brittany

Daniel was travelling around the country with his Bio Gas project so we joined him in the little town of Dinard for the long weekend.

It was tiring since the kids went to school in the morning. They only missed two hours of school, one of which was religion and they're teacher I knew wouldn't be there because it was a Jewish holiday (Fast of Ester). We had to change stations in Paris, which was a little tricky. I got a cab right away with a very colorful driver from Cape Verde islands who spoke French, English, Portuguese, Spanish and whose daughter works for Singapore Airlines. He dropped us off right at the platforms and we even had time to buy stuff.

We stayed at the Grand Hotel Barriere, another of the same chain we used in La Baule.



http://www.lucienbarriere.com/localized/en/hotel/etablissements/grand_hotel_barriere_dinard.htm?lang=en
(see it in good weather, since we didn't!)

It was such a cute town but we rarely saw it without rain. I did take a walk Sunday morning and took a few pictures. They really don't do the place justice;



check out the car in this one;














The beaches were pretty good, much prettier than La Baule, which isn't that far away.





We drove about 50km to see Mont St. Michel on Saturday. I hadn't seen it since we went on an excursion while I was studying in Angers in 1987. Unfortunately, it was so windy that we couldn't park and go see it. I wanted to take a picture of the kids in front of it but I couldn't manage even that.





The rooms were nice and they had a limited kids' club going on for the weekend. We were able to go out to dinner on Saturday night while they had Karake night and there was an Easter Egg hunt on Sunday morning. The pool was also good and they even provided kiddie bath robes and slippers.





Getting home did not go as smoothly. We had an extra change of train in Rennes. When we arrived at Montparnasse, I did NOT see any taxi stand. I was give the wrong directions by security (found out later) and in desperation, ran downstairs and took the Métro instead. It is a very long walk through a long tunnel. I had read on the internet that it was a 17 minute journey and I did have métro tickets with me. That was good thinking as there was a long line. The train was packed because of the holiday weekend. Luckily, it is a direct line between Montparnasse and Gare de l'Est but we had to stand for all 13 stations. I wasn't sure if we'd make it and I was sweating. We did make it with 10 minutes to spare.