Géniale: Toussaint Vacations

Since language assistants are employed by the French Ministry of Education, we benefit from the same vacations as the schools we are employed by. The dates of the vacations vary depending on whether you are in Zone A, B, or C and they occur about ever six weeks. The Toussaint (All Saints Day) vacation ran from October 22 until November 3, and some of my roommates and I decided to do some traveling in Brittany. We visited Rennes, the capital of Brittany, St. Malo a resort town on the coast of Brittany, one of the Channel Islands, Jersey, and Dinan, a medieval town between St. Malo and Rennes.

Day one of our trip (Monday) was dedicated to Rennes, and it was the first time I’d been in a city since my arrival in France. We did some shopping in French department stores, explored the town, and spent the afternoon avoiding rain. Although I didn’t get to see all of Rennes, it is only an hour train ride away, and I know I will have to go back in a few months for my immigration appointment to validate my visa.

The next morning we took the train to St. Malo where we were able drop our bags off early at the hotel. St. Malo is known for the part of the city that is “Intra-Muros” because the old city is housed within ramparts and is located on the beach. This area of France (as well as the Channel Islands) experiences the largest tidal changes in the world. When the tide was out we were able to walk to some islands off the beach at St. Malo, and two days later we watched visitors to the island wading through the water because they were almost stuck on the islands due to high tide. We found that it is impossible to get lost within the walls of St. Malo and enjoyed walking the ramparts, experiencing an impromptu concert at the Church there, and Breton foods such as gallets (savory crepes made with a buckwheat batter), kouign amann (a layered pastry made with lots of butter and sugar, and sometimes apples), ker-y-pom (another pastry, the closest equivalent to this would be an apple pie pocket), and salted caramels. Karen and I also found a great antique shop with old postcards and maps and enjoyed looking around inside. It was very relaxing to be in St. Malo because after a few hours I already knew the town, and we spent our second day there (Thursday) wandering with several coffee breaks.

Wednesday there was a special deal on the ferry to Jersey, so we got up early and headed to the port. It took us about an hour and fifteen minutes to travel between St. Malo and St. Helier, the capital of Jersey. Jersey is interesting because it is part of the UK, but they do not consider Queen Elizabeth to be the queen, although they are still loyal to her. In Jersey the Queen is known as the Duke of Normandy and on their currency (which is the worth same as the pounds in the rest of the UK) the Queen does not wear a crown. We explored St. Helier and were then able to take “Le Petit Train” to St. Aubin, another town about three miles away. The train ride allowed us to have a good view of the bay, and we were able to experience high and low tide in Jersey. Jersey gains several square miles of land during low tide because of the large changes. We also spent the day trying to find Jersey Ice cream because we kept seeing signs for it, but we didn’t have any luck…finally one shop-keeper told us that you can only get it in the summer. That evening we returned to St. Malo, and we re-entered France. No one was stationed at customs, and there were no passport checks, so hopefully that won’t cause me any problems in the future!

On Friday we decided to stop in Dinan on the way back to Guingamp and a fellow assistant, Rebecca, greeted us. It was great to have a guide of the city and we were able to see all the sights (and of course stop at a café). Dinan is a little bit bigger than Guingamp and is definitely worth a day trip. At the end of the night we were happy to be on the train “home” to the apartment, even though we had an hour-long stop over to change trains one town away from Guingamp!