Day 1. Rennes

We arrived early to navigate the Gare Montparnasse, bought baguettes and tartlettes for lunch at the station, and headed for our platform for the train to Rennes.  We had a moment of panic when we couldn't find our carriage number, but asking a guard, discovered that there were TWO very very long trains, and ours was the second one.  We settled into our second class, but very comfortable, seats, and the train quietly and smoothly set off before we realised it was moving.  French train travellers are very quiet and restrained.  If they have to use a phone, they whisper into it, any discussions are pretty muted, and in the bar/cafe area, even though alcohol is served, nobody got raucous or pissed.  Most quietly read, unobtrusively ate, listened to music or chatted quietly.   We decided that Americans, Spaniards and Chinese are the noisiest travellers in Paris, but here, all was calm.

The train sped  at 278 kph but it was a quite comfortable trip, which gave us a great view of the countryside.  The landscape started out as very flat farms with hay being reaped and corn being grown, dotted  with wind turbines.  The farmland is frequently broken by woods and the occasional cream farm hoses with red tiled roofs.  Later, the land becomes prettier and more rolling, and farm houses are made of stone.  The villages generally seem quite attractive, as do the towns, but Le Mans seemed fairly ugly from the train.  We had  a hold up for some reason, so the 2 hour trip took closer to 3 hours.

The hotel is to the north of the town, and fairly close to the station, thank goodness, and turned out to be very modern and swish.  We had a restorative cup of tea and caught up with news from home, then set off to explore the town.

We crossed the Vilaine, which is more like a canal than a river,

and discovered that this is a real tourist town.  Lots of shops and cafes, lots of book shops (I am impressed how in love with books the French are), lots of squares, and the most amazing collection of

medieval buildings.

Some of them are obviously beyond repair

and some seem to be still standing due to some miracle, listing dramatically and having patches that seem to be made of some sort of super glue, but they are so attractive with their mismatched colours and their individuality.

The town of Rennes, however, also has more than its fair share of very solid, prosperous looking edifices, which attest to a prosperous past as capital of Brittany.  For instance, there is the Palais Saint-Georges, which used to be an abbey,

The town isn't all about buildings, though.  There are numerous squares for people to relax in,

and lots of broad streets to explore.

Similarly, there seems to be a broader cross- section of classes here than we noticed in Paris.  There even seems to be a very big hippy population.  Dreadlocks and Mohican haircuts abounded in the north-west of the old town.  This town really has a buzz about it.

I think it is going to be fun exploring Rennes and surrounding Brittany over the next few days.