Vacances de Toussaint: A Series of Successful Misadventures

Hello everybody! I'm finally done with my nice long vacation from my blog. It's time to end the denial phase, accept that vacation is over, and get back to work documenting my experiences in France. But first, a rather long note about my vacation.

As I mentioned in my previous post, I decided to spend my two-week vacation traveling northwestern France with my dear high school friend, Betsy Herlong (you can read her blog here). I kicked off our travels by meeting her in Nantes, a large city close to her home in a small town called Ancenis. After a day in Ancenis, we took a train to Rennes, where we spent only a couple of hours before setting off to Saint Malo. We stayed in Saint Malo for three days, and then headed back to Blois via Angers. She spent four days with me in Blois, which we used as a jumping-off-point to explore other places in my region, namely Vendôme, Amboise, and Tours.

Here's a map of our adventures. If you click on the pin, you can see some of the highlights of each city.

Like most vacations, ours was a series of successes and misadventures.

Successes:
We are masters of the French train system, and it never failed to impress us with its punctuality (except for that one time when the train was late in Angers). We also ate excellent food, ranging from French Mexican to Turkish kebabs, from giant desserts to homemade Italian soup, boeuf bourginon, ratatouille, and cube steak. We saw a great French rom com and understood nearly every word. We shared a wonderful evening of down-home Southern cooking with Mr. Gauben and his wife Dominique. We got touring cities down to a science: orient with a map or the friendly Office du Tourisme; beeline to château,  cathedral, or ramparts, whichever comes first while scanning the restaurants for delicious, cheap food; warm up with coffee for Betsy and various drinks for me; find a park, river, or sea; take cool photos; get on train; repeat. As super-efficient tourists, we packed light, looked for deals (and found them!), and weren't afraid to try new things...which is probably why we got into some of our misadventures. (Note: Misadventures are not failures, but challenges met and overcome that enrich our experience.)

Misadventures:

Rennes
We were only in Rennes for seven or so hours, and we thought it would be a good idea to leave our heavy backpacks in the lockers at the Office du Tourisme while we explored the city. And it was a great idea, until we confused the closing time and our bags got locked in the Office du Tourisme over night. Whoops. We maintained our cool and sought Mexican food for solace. Luckily, it was not too time-consuming or expensive to go ahead and travel to Saint Malo where we had reservations at a fabulous hostel and return to Rennes the next day to claim our bags. We "roughed" it, going without shower or clean clothes until we were reunited with our backpacks the next day. We got more time in Rennes and delicious kebabs out of the deal, so all in all a successful misadventure.

Saint-Malo
We decided to go to a play on Saturday night, a musical comedy that was meant to make a statement of the superficiality of appearances in the modern world. After the woman at the front desk of our hostel nodded enthusiastically and encouraged us to go, we were sure it would be a tasteful, enjoyable evening, full of laughs, song, and deep thinking. What we found was a community theater production of a play still in production with a cast that could barely carry a tune. The play was set in the welcome office/ waiting room of a fitness center and centered around the development of a young Bretonne woman interning at the office. We enjoyed the first hour despite the off-key singing and ridiculous scenarios, but Hour 2 took its toll and we began to squirm, waiting for the end when everyone would come on stage and take their bows. We were sure when the pregnant woman attempted to shoot her non-committal, potentially gay boyfriend that it was over, but we still had 30 minutes to go, that included the little children dressing up as devils and stabbing aforementioned boyfriend with their spiked devil's forks. Finally, everyone got married, and we escaped into the night to get a much-needed glass of wine at a local night club.

Blois
When we returned to Blois, we came back to an apartment still infested with cockroaches. A ever-sympathetic Mr. Gauben (who will from now on be known as Henri per his request) gave me more cockroach spray, which I avoided using due to its toxicity that necessitates a quick exit from the premises. However, while I was cooking boeuf bourginon for our dinner, one of those sneaky little buggers decided that the knob of my stove would be an excellent place to chill out and wait for left-overs. After Betsy and I shared a good scream and some frantic prancing around with various hard objects to smash him with, I caught him in an empty tomato sauce jar and threw the whole thing away. We finished our meal and fumigated the apartment with the spray, electing to take a lovely evening stroll around Blois to avoid poisoning ourselves. We came back to a row of dead cockroaches. Victory is sweet.

Now I am back to work at the elementary schools and enjoying being a Blaisoise once more. Harriet and Amy are back from England, and we are determined to increase our adventuring between now and Christmas. We will try to see new things on the weekend and look for fun things to do and cool people to meet. Harriet and I have already begun our new challenge: yesterday, we had a great misadventure trying to go to the big cineplex on the outskirts of town to see (to our shame) Breaking Dawn Part 2 dubbed in French (according to the French previews, Kristen Stewart's French persona is both interesting and intelligent). Alas, we never made it as we couldn't find a way to cross the stupid highway, so instead we went shopping, found a cheap cocktail shaker and martini glasses, and opted for a night in with pistachio ice cream, cosmos, and a chick flick. Perfection. We'll be going out this weekend for the engineer university-sponsored blow-out party/ dance, so that should be exciting as well.

Cheers!