Troisieme Photospam

[bloodygranuaile]

One of the buttons on Brendan's backpack. This is why Brendan is awesome.


Remember I said "Man, can the French do dessert"? Charlotte's birthday was no exception. They tend to have slightly dryer chocolate cakes but that's because they serve it to you with either a scoop of ice cream or a ladleful of just plain cream. And this cake involved marzipan, which made me really happy. Not to mention that it was about the only really good food we got at the Auberge ('cept the cheese).


Dinan. Most of Dinan is these awesome little Elizabethan overhanging sort of houses that look like they're about to collapse. I would have liked Dinan very much if it weren't for the fact that (a) we were there at like nine in the morning so nothing was open except one pharmacy and one boulangerie/patisserie (which sold really big merengues!), and (b) the fact that about ten of us got our direction screwed up 'cos the told us where to meet in French, and "port" (where we were supposed to meet, and which is OUTSIDE the city) and "porte" (meaning gate, of which there were seven) sound really similar.


Le Chateau de Combourg, creepy Romanesque castle and childhood home of early Romantic writer Chateaubriand (who is buried in Saint Malo!). Called "the birthplace of Romanticism" because one of the first Romantic novels ever written was Chateaubriand's memoirs of growing up there with his crazy-arse parents. Also the inspiration for the castle in "Cinderella". And there is a dead cat in a glass case all the way up in Chateaubriand's bedroom, because at the time the castle was built it was tradition to wall up a live black cat in the construction to ward off bad luck, and they have since retrieved it. Despite being like nine hundred years old it is quite definitely a cat and VERY unhappy one at the time of it's death.

Oh, and our guided tour was in French. I think by now I understand guided tours better than conversations.


Tansy and Laura eating "fresh" (aka, raw, just out of the ocean, and barely dead with lemon juice) oysters in some town that is tres celebre for its oysters and I just don't remember the name of it. Qui se souvient le nom de la ville ou les gens plus courageux que moi ont goute des huitres?


Anyone else horribly amused by the similarities between the Breton flag and the US one?


Feet of one of the male dancers in the Bulgarian delegation at the "Folklores du Monde" parade. Bulgarians then commenced to draw "random people" (mostly teenage girls) out of the audience to join in dancing, which do not have a photo of as I was included. It was way not very difficult as I'd been out Breton dancing the night before and the footwork was exceedingly similar.


Yes, it's CAPTAIN JACK SPARROW! This dude actually stayed at the Auberge with us, and it was really amusing when he wasn't in costume because the braids in the beard are real, so now we just have a random bald Frenchman in a mildly piratey red bandanna like I was wearing the whole time and two silly-looking braids in his beard. He was actually very good; I thought it was a statue at first when he was standing still (partially because the makeup was so thick it gave him a very plastic complexion), and the moving performance was just about perfect except for the strong French accent. Nearly died laughing when I heard it. (Was a pretty good antidote to the obnoxiously slow French service at the pizzeria [because Brendan and I are just SO French, we went out for pizza during our diner libre], I just wish I'd been able to go into the intra-muros more often to see wierd things like this.)