Brittany, Summer 2015 // 1 - Côtes d'Armor

There were a lot of reasons for us to spend a summer holiday in Brittany. First, we both love France, especially the north-eastern part of it, we've been to Normandy for our very first holiday together. We'd also watched a documentary about the region and decided it was about time we started planning our trip there. And last but not least we had read Jean-Luc Bannalec's Brittany-themed books starring the wonderful Comissaire Dupin. The books also describe some of the most beautiful places in the region.
Monsieur loves to go camping. Me - not so much. Until summer 2015 I'd probably never spent even a single night in a tent without absolutely being forced to do so. But then we discussed the different possibilities of getting around in France and where to stay for the nights, and it became clear that camping would be the least expensive way and also give us more flexibility. I agreed, reluctantly, and clearly stated that I'd go and find a nice hotel if it wouldn't stop raining for a few days. So camping it was. We took a flight to Nantes and rented a car - and were on our way into the north, towards Côtes-d'Armor. Driving along the coast, we would reach the Finistère region and at the end of our two weeks, we'd spend some days more south in the Morbihan region.
This is the first of three blog posts, I decided to write one about each region we visited. And I've created a map on tripline in case you'd like to follow our route:



Driving north from Nantes took us half a day, in the evening we arrived at Camping de Matignon where we decided to stay for the first night.

The weather on the next day was just fantastic, and after a long day travelling we felt the urge to go hiking. Cap Fréhel turned out to be a wonderful idea. We started close to Fort la Latte, visited the lighthouse of Cap Fréhel and walked back across "les landes", moorland with a lot of different flowers and birds. It was a great day, although we didn't bring enough food with us. Our guide had stated that there's a restaurant at the Cap, but it wasn't open. So we were quite hungry when we finally arrived at our car again and soon after found the first of many great crêperies we visited during our trip. I particularly remember the bliss of drinking an ice cold "Breizh Cola"...

Fort La Latte

Oyster beds

The lighthouse at Cap Fréhel

On our way west we visited Pointe de l'Arcouest the next day. From Pointe de l'Arcouest you normally have a great view towards Bréhat, an island just opposite. But the weather was quite misty and we couldn't see so much. The restaurants were not really what we'd expected, so we soon returned to Paimpol for lunch.

The Camping les Dunes in Port Blanc was a recommendation we found in the guidebook and it was a good one. The camping itself is quite basic, but the location is incredibly beautiful - in the dunes, only a few steps from the beach. We really enjoyed our stay there!

One evening we drove over to Plougrescant to see "Castel Meur", a house built in between of two massive, huge rocks. A great sight! But when we arrived there, two cars were parked in front of the house, so our photos are quite disappointing. You can find some information on the house and Plougrescant on this website (in French). We had a picnic and enjoyed the beautiful views on the sea, it really was a nice evening.

On our way back to the Camping, we stopped at Port Blanc and had a wonderful view of "La Sentinelle". One of the most impressive places I've ever seen, "La Sentinelle" means "the sentinel" and it's not hard to imagine why.

The next day we continued our trip, direction north-west, towards Finistère - the end of the world. More to come in my next blog post!

Creux du Van - September 2016

When I started this blog I promised myself to always keep up with my travels, write about all of them and not bring any of them forward. Well. Actually I'm quite far behind at the moment, but the next post in line is about a two weeks holiday and I'm just not done yet. So I decided to post about a little adventure here at home instead. Things I do around here are not really travels, right? So this exception is probably not too bad. Especially because this post is about a place I wanted to visit ever since I first heard of it: the Creux du Van.

Monsieur and me both love to go hiking in the mountains. Because I managed to damage my knee while swimming in the river this summer, we couldn't go for long hikes during the last few weeks, but my knee is fine again and the weather promised to be sunny and warm last weekend, so we decided to finally pack our rucksacks, put on our hiking boots and take a train to the beautiful Val de Travers. From where we live it's about 1.5h, so we took the chance to have breakfast on the train and be in Noiraigue, the starting point of our hike, at around 10:30 am.

There are several paths up to the top of the rock face, we took the "Sentier du Single" up and the "Sentier des quatorze contours" down. The path leads through a beautiful forest, 725 meters up. If you are absolutely not into hiking, you could actually drive your car up to the restaurant "Le Soliat", but it'd be a pity to miss the nice views through the trees. Hiking up and down again together takes about 4.5h - depends on how fit you are and also on the path itself, when we were there it was quite muddy and slippery in parts and you had to be very careful not to fall.

Technically, the Creux du Van is just a place where water and glacial erosion shaped the mountain for thousands of years. But they did a very good job. The result is a huge cirque, about 1400 m in diameter and 160 m deep. When I first saw it on photos, I didn't realize how big it really is. If you suffer from fear of heights, you should probably stay away from the edge, looking down gave me goosebumps even if I'm not in the least afraid of heights. Some people actually don't seem to feel unsafe crawling closer and closer to the edge and even climb down to small ledges just below it. I couldn't even watch them without shuddering. On a beautiful autumn saturday like this you probably shouldn't be surprised if you're not alone up there, but the Creux du Van seems to attract a lot of people who don't have much to do with hiking in the mountains on the other 364 days of the year.

When we were there, we saw two drones flying around the Creux du Van, filming. You can find several nice videos on YouTube, I think this one is especially impressive:

We enjoyed ourselves very much having lunch up on top and also liked the path back down to Noiraigue, although I still feel soreness in my calves today =) I'd love to go back to the Creux du Van one day and maybe see a sunset or sunrise...

Florence - May 2015

Summer holidays back when I was a kid often meant packing a lot of suitcases and bags in our car one Friday evening and going to bed full of excitement just to be woken up very, very early the next morning, getting into the car and driving south - to Italy. This is why I got to know many of the cultural treasures Italy has to offer at a very young age, and while it took me a few years of visiting churches until I learned to appreciate their beauty and architectural awesomeness (my sister had to be "convinced" with promises of shopping tours and such to come visiting with us...), I loved the italian way of life from the beginning - and I still do today. Travelling to Italy always feels a bit like coming home to me, reviving memories of late evenings sitting on stones still warm from the day's sun, eating gelati by the lake... and I've also met my first holiday sweetheart in Italy!

Ponte Vecchio

While I have seen many other great places in Italy, we never visited Florence. We have spent more than one summer in the Toscana region, but I can't say why my parents decided not to go there. Last year, I finally got the chance to see Florence though: on a trip with my choir. The weather was okay most of the time but not when we went for a guided tour of the city, so I don't have a lot of pictures of the city itself to show. We gave two concerts, one of them at the wonderful Teatro del Sale. Imagine a big theatre - for the first part of the evening, there are tables where the guests can sit in groups and have a great dinner. You can see the kitchen through a window and some of the dishes you'll have to pick up directly at this window, the cooks come there and advertise their new accomplishments so the guests know about the next delicacies. After dinner, you'll take your seat and everyone gets closer to the stage to wait for the evening's show. We felt very honoured to have the chance for a concert in this great place, and it was a fantastic evening!

Santa Maria del Fiore

Palazzo Vecchio

 

What I really loved in Florence were the different works of street art I found. There are many beautiful, creative and witty drawings/pictures, and I want to show you some of the photos I took.

Clet Abraham transforms Florence's street signs into fantastic artwork. You can find him on Facebook or Instagram (@cletabraham) - or watch a short film about his work here (in German).

 Another artist calls himself/herself "Blub" and the artwork she/he creates is called "L'arte sa nuotare", meaning "art knows how to swim". I would like to recommend his/her Instagram account (@lartesanuotare) - I just love the idea behind these pictures.

One of the pictures I took shows a work by "Exit/Enter" - last but not least I'd like to recommend an interesting blog post with more information about street art in Florence and the artists behind it.