It’s about time – or time management. I get on these “let’s distract myself” tangents and then I don’t make the time to write the posts that are floating around in my head. I could blame work (many things in my brain on that), but, really, it’s only me to blame. Sigh. Alrighty then. Onward and upward. Right ho. Oh wait…I have to go make dinner…
Last week the Mother unit was here. It was great fun to show her around and take her to some of the sites that she had only seen in photos. Midway through her time here (from Berlin, where she’s been living to be closer to the Brother and his family) the Husband went to Berlin! He and the Brother had long ago planned to attend a Shinedown/Alter Bridge concert together and were excited that the time had finally arrived. Anyway, back to the Mother’s trip here. The Daughter had gone to Scotland to visit a friend for a few days, and the Mother had timed her arrival into Paris to coincide with the Daughter’s arrival back there. They thought it was great fun to meet at CDG and take the TGV (France’s high speed train) to Rennes together. The Husband and I picked them up at the train station, brought them back to Dinan – then watched the Mother’s face as she tried to take in the absolute cuteness of this place, especially our street!
We took the Mother to Fougeres and La Roche aux Fees (the incredible megalithic site). The next day we were off to Vitre, Mont Dol and Dol de Bretagne. We were in Dol on our first trip to Brittany but had not returned this trip. Sorry to the Best Friend and her family…we should have taken you there! I had forgotten how much I liked it. In particular, the cathedral. It ranks in my top two favorite churches ever (tied with the little one we stopped to see on our way to Saint Malo). I had forgotten how incredibly beautiful it is. Not so much on the outside – it’s actually lopsided and sort of grungy looking. Inside though, inside is stunningly beautiful.
The church that is standing now is mostly 12th-13th century, with a few bits of the 8th century building. It’s hard to explain why it’s a favorite. It’s not that there is something super outstanding (like Notre Dame de Paris and its flying buttresses), it’s just the overall thing. And its bits. Seriously. It is spectacular.
Another stop we made that day was at Mont Dol. To someone from the Pacific Northwest it’s a bit more of a bump in the land. Unfortunately, there was a lot of fog out at the coastline – I had visions of beautiful photos of Mont-St-Michel in my head – but, nope. We did get a couple of beauties of other things though! The hill was important back into Roman times – there is a small chapel, dedicated to the dead of WWI, that is built on the site of an ancient pagan temple. Also at the top is Tour Notre Dame, topped by, surprisingly, a statue of Our Lady.
Also on top of the hill is a large rock known as the Devil’s Imprint – or something much prettier in French that I forgot to write down. There is a cute legend attached to this rock:
The Devil was angry when Mont St Michel was built and dedicated to St Michael. The Devil and St Michael agreed to compete for ownership of le Mont. The Devil claimed the Mont was his and it was decided that whoever could jump the furthest would win. The Devil fell into the River CouĆ«non but the air lifted St. Michael’s wings and he was swept to Mont Dol. St Michael hit the Devil so hard that the Devil hit this boulder with his tush and left a big dent!
Of course, we had to take the Mother to the Roman ruins in Corseul! She was properly astonished at the Temple of Mars, but we made an additional stop that we hadn’t made before. In the town of Corseul itself (the temple is a little out of town) one of the Roman roads and a few buildings are visibleš„°
There were remains of a few houses, but it just wasn’t possible to properly capture them in photos. Which was too bad, because when you’re standing there it is so obvious what you are looking at! Corseul nicely gives wonderful explanations as well, so it helps if you can’t picture what a building would have looked like.
We definitely kept the Mother busy during the few days that she was here! We also trekked (if you can consider driving down the motorway a trek) back to Mont St Michel and I drove her up to Bayeux. She spent the next several days exploring Bayeux, Caen, Rouen, plus other sites related to D-Day – it is Normandy after all!
Next post: next visitors and we make our own explorations of several D-Day related places…and I’ll even try to get it up in a timely manner. Try.