Brittany/Paris

Hello everyone, sorry for the delay in posting, it's been a bit of a struggle finding internet.

On Sunday we took the Chunnel train from London to Paris and met up with Maxime and his dad at Gare du Nord. We drove with them for the 6 hours out to Brittany, the western part of France.

When we arrived, we were met by the Rouffy's gorgeous home and treated like family. Max took us to all his old stomping grounds. It's really a beautiful part of France. The first thing you notice is the quiet. There are almost no cars and it's so peaceful. That plus no light pollution make the stargazing fantastic.







After a good night's sleep, Max took us to La Torche, one of France's most famous surfing beaches. After clambering up and down the rocks and meeting a few of Max's surfer friends, we pulled on some wetsuits and tried our hand at surfing and bodyboarding in the frigid water.

Surprisingly, bodyboarding is the harder of the two. Both Jonah and I were able to ride a few waves by the end of the afternoon and Stephen was on his way before hypothermia nearly killed us all. That and the massive jellyfish herd floating around that threatened to zap us to death.





That night, Max's mom made us some authentic crepes, Brittany's specialty. Honestly, it doesn't get any better than that. Ham and cheese with some egg...absolutely unbelievable. Max tried to make us some dessert crepes, with mixed results, but all in all it was a great dinner.

The next day, we made our way to "The End of the Earth", the most western point of France. The big outcropping of jagged rock jutting out into the ocean kept us busy for a couple of hours as Stephen snapped over 300 photos and Jonah freeclimbed some of the rock faces.

After that, we had lunch at a French McDonald's because Maxime swore it was better than the U.S. version. He was right, much less greasy and really good potato wedge things. From there, we went to the train station and boarded our train for Paris.

After the 6 hour train ride, we got to the Montparnasse station and realized we had overlooked one key detail by stopping in France: none of us speak any French whatsoever. We walked around the station for about half and hour trying to figure where to go until we finally bought some metro tickets and found our way to the hotel.

We're staying at the Hotel Eugenie in the Latin Quarter, just south of the Seine and just north of Le Sorbonne, the big university. In other words, it couldn't be in a better spot (thank you, Deb and Bernie). Our hotel is surrounded by awesome restaurants, bars and shopping and is in a really lively part of town.

We had dinner near our hotel, walked around the banks of the Seine for a bit and then met some awesome people in a few of the pubs. First night in Paris, successful.



We woke up early this morning to go on a walking tour (thank you, Bert and Paula) that took us to the Eiffel Tower, L'Ecole Militaire, L'Invalides, the Champs d'Elysee (including the Arc du Triomphe), the Jardins de Tuileries, the Louvre and the Notre Dame. Quite the morning, I assure you. It was a really long walk but Paris truly is amazing, it can't really be described.

After a little nap to recharge our batteries, we checked out the Musee d'Orsay. The museum is famous for its collection of Impressionist painters, including Van Gogh, Monet and Manet. It was really cool seeing all their paintings up close, each brings something unique to the table that even people like myself who don't know anything about art can appreciate. Those plus all the other artists and cool sculptures and it was a very good time.

That's all we have for right now, although the next few days promise to be full of memorable places and events, so we'll try to keep this as up-to-date as possible. Also, Stephen is struggling a bit to get photos up (there's no shortage, he's taken 1,400+) so we'll see how that goes. Miss everyone a lot.

-Charl