Wonderful Dinner at John and Chris' and trip to Lorient

February 02, 2013

Wonderful Dinner at John and Chris' and trip to Lorient

On a sunny day on the weekend, the entire country turns out to shop, eat lunch, promenade, and visit the ocean beaches!

So, we decided to visit the city of Lorient and the beaches along the coast on the way back home. We investigated the Soldes (sales) in Lorient Old Town (New Town) and then had lunch of crêpes....it is Chandeleur, Fête de la Lumière,* or jour des crêpes, crêpe day in Brittany ... see http://french.about.com/od/culture/a/chandeleur.htm. Very delicious crêpes and the restaurant was beautiful and as we were a little late eating, we were alone when we finished, so the owner (the only person working in the restaurant) talked to us in his best English and our very best French (neither of which was very good) about how hard it is to run a business in France. He was very curious about how things were in the U.S. The French are currently trying to foster entrepreneurs, which is not a concept that lives in mainstream French life.

Then it was on to the Keroman Submarine Base which was created by the Germans in WWII and was the only part of Lorient that survived bombing by the allies to destroy it.....it was solid concrete! The allies were actually trying to destroy the water and supplies to the base, but that story doesn't have quite the ring to it. That explains why the old town is New Town. Only a couple of significant buildings survived the war.

Then on to the ocean.....Larmor Plage, Le Couregant, Kerroc'h, and Guidel...beautiful ocean! Lots of wind sailing, surfing and sailboat racing ... all in 8 degrees Celsius!

The last three photos are of the three sacred fountains in our neighborhood.....Le Hénan, which we had never seen before but John told us about them.....beautiful and notice the moss everywhere...we have had a rainy winter!

Last night we were invited for Moules (Moules-frites - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)
at John and Chris' house along with John and Lynne. We had a wonderful time and the moules were awesome as were the delicious prawns that John cooked especially for me....I really tried, but I'm not ready for moules yet....but it was a wonderful evening and seeing their beautiful house that they had built 6 years ago was exciting....what a perfect house and "everything works" says Chris! Even heating in the floors...what a comfortable house and what a great time we had!