Friday, June 22, 2007

Back online

We found another internet cafe down the road thats open 24/7 so Im back. Unfortunately they dont have qwerty keyboards so if you see some whacky letters, use your imagination to devine the meaning...

Yesterday we left Brest to drive towards St Brieuc, the town where we were to pick up the TGV train to Paris. On the way we stopped in a fantastic little port for lunch at a gorgeous cafe. Unfortunately because my stomach was quite upset I ate nothing but fries. I apologised to the waitress for being so boring and she laughed.

We set off up the coast and stopped in a town which is rich in pink granite. I'll have to ask Sophie later the name of that town. But they have so much pink granite that everything is made out of it : the houses, the sidewalks, the fences, the bridges... everything. We were delighted today to find some Egyption stone sculptures in the Louvre and thanks to yesterday, we knew straight away that they were made of pink granite.

We then headed further along the coast to look at the Cairn of Barnenez. A cairn is a neolithic burial mound. In France they have monoliths, a single stone like the menhir in the picture earlier. They also have megaliths, and these are big piles of little stones. Barnenez was only discovered around 40 years ago when a local company was quarrying stone in the area. Because the stones were so neat they called in the archeaologists and what do you know : a neolithic burial site was discovered, which is over 4,500 years old.

We finally got to St Brieuc, got on the train and voila : we arrived in Paris three hours later. It was a special night across the whole of France called Fete De La Musique. Everyone comes onto the street to play music. In Montparnasse where we are staying, it was like New Years Eve or Mardi Gras. We stayed up until midnight. Whoo hoo!

The revelation in France has been crepes, creperies; and the crepe makers. Never was there a food that is so right. Except chocolate. But I'm sure Mark will say more about the crepes.

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