Our Blog - Bretagne, France

At the end of August, we headed North for a little vacation. Toulouse is great for 10 months of the year, but July and August are usually pretty warm. The average high for those 2 months is 82° (for a comparison, average high in Raleigh, NC for the same months is 88° and 89°) but being in the downtown area always seems hotter with all of the concrete. As well ... while our apartment is air conditioned ... not everywhere is, and it is definitely not *American* air conditioning (other than at Starbucks). We have had to organize our days a little differently to take Lucy for longer walks in the morning and right before bedtime to take advantage of the cooler weather. So we've been thinking about spending our summers away from home .. which is what the French do! We are looking into Brittany (Bretagne) .. and as an example, the average high for July and August in Quiberon is 70°. Many businesses shut down and take their own vacations during the month of August. This year we did a little exploratory trip to check out some villages that we may want to stay in during the next few years. We think a village/small town would be nice, especially so that maybe we can find a little cottage or holiday home to rent that has a yard for Lucy to run in. We want to be sure that it is large enough to have bakeries and cafés, but small enough so that we can walk around it without any problems.

We did visit a few touristy places while we were there, but I won't have as many links as normal :-) First, we'll start with two small villages that we visited on the trip North.

Saint-Jean d'Angely

Pujols-le-Haut

Along the way, we made a few carefully-planned stops to let Lucy walk a little bit, and experience some new things. Here is a little pond that we stopped at that had a path around it, in a TINY little village with something like 10 houses and a bakery!

We also made a stop at a the Guérande Salt Marshes, and learned a bunch about salt.

We stayed for 5 nights at a small apartment just across from the "Cote Sauvage" or "savage coast". Each day, we would drive around to several small villages to check things out. Some ended up being better than others, and we have a small list of potentials! Now we just have to find a place to stay!