Paris to Vannes via Coutances

Journal entry from Friday, July 26, 2019:

Travel day. We made it to Brittany! In Paris this morning, Jeff went to pick up our rental car while the rest of us packed up in our apartment. I woke up SWEATY--every part of me that touched the mattress was sweaty. Yuck. Thankfully it did end up cooling off after 3am in Paris, so once I turned our fan around the cool air blew in and eased our sweaty suffering.

A little after 11am, we crammed our bags and knees into our European micro SUV and headed out: Jay sat wedged in the back with our bags, then Leslie, Amber, and Rose sat across the middle bench together, and Jeff and I were in the front. Jeff drove the stick shift through heavy scary Paris traffic like a pro. The large traffic circles with no lane lines were admittedly terrifying for all of us, and I had to look in our blind spot and tell Jeff when he was clear to exit the busy circle. But we survived and got out of Paris within half an hour or so. Then we were suddenly in the country, with rolling green hills, farmland, and trees. It was beautiful. Jeff and I decided we could happily retire to Normandy.


We decided to take the long way to our next place, so we drove north towards Normandy, then west through Normandy, then south to Brittany before arriving in the town of Vannes on the southwest coast. For lunch we stopped at a big Carrefour store (like Walmart, but with better food) and picked up some bread, meat, pain-au-chocolat, and carrots to eat in the car. I kept dozing off while Jeff drove! It was disorienting. I had two patches of time where I was not conscious, but thankfully I was still able to enjoy plenty of the countryside views.

The main reason we took the long route to Vannes was so we could visit Coutances, the beautiful small town on the northern coast of France that Jeff served in for 3 months of his mission (it is no longer a missionary area). We stopped there for an hour and walked around the darling rustic downtown area, walking through the light gothic Notre Dame cathedral there. All over town there were large pictures of what it looked like after the bombing during WWII. It was fascinating to compare past and present side-by-side like that. Human beings are resilient. Jeff said that while he was serving as a missionary there 17 years ago, older people would come up to him and thank him for what his country did for theirs during WWII. Wow.

We visited the beautiful flower park with all of the carefully arranged and blended flowerbeds. It was cloudy and 70 degrees there--such a drastic 37 degree change from yesterday in Paris! We got the kids ice cream and walked around admiring flowers while they ate. Then it was on the road again.

About 90 minutes from our destination, Rose got carsick and threw up into our trash bag. We were all feeling a bit nauseous after listening to and smelling that explosion, and it was a long 5-7 minutes before Jeff found a parking lot to pull over and dispose of the refuse. We made one more stop before arriving in Vannes: McDonald's for dinner. Ugh. There really weren't any other quick easy options.

When we arrived in Vannes, we had to drive down the narrowest road ever (our rental car has proximity alarms that go off whenever the car is too close to objects, and it was beeeeping at us down the whole tiny road. I jumped out with Rose and found the mailbox where our Airbnb keys had been left for us, deciphering the emailed instructions from our host, written in French: go to door #2, then find mailbox #__. It was quite the scavenger hunt.

Then we had to figure out the parking garage situation. The allotted parking spot for our apartment was in the sub-level -2 below our apartment building, and the space was minuscule. Jeff had to do all kinds of difficult contortionist maneuvering to squeeze the car into the spot--I swear it was a 30 point turn to get into that tiny space. It wasn't just a parking spot; it was a garage with a door so it was extra tight. Eventually (with a few silent prayers on my part) he made it into the garage and we got our luggage up two levels to the ground floor and found our apartment. Whew!

Hello, Vannes! We got into our apartment around 9pm and didn't go anywhere in town on foot, and it's weird not knowing where we are in relation to anything in town. Normally we have to walk through town  to our hotel/airbnb, but not with a car. New territory awaits!

Ready to go!

I took a few last minute pictures of our Paris apartment on Rue Michel Tagrine. It was a great space.

The banister had twine tied to it for hanging laundry out to dry. We used it regularly.

Jeff and I took the least glamorous bedroom in the place. Those beds were rock solid and about 6 inches off the floor.

On the road: That's La Defense, the modern arch in the business-y area of Paris. It was so weird to be in a CAR in Paris. Thankfully our apartment was in the northern part of the city so we got out of there relatively quickly without having to drive through the heart of the city.

Jay has the strongest stomach so he sat crammed in the back seat of the tiny SUV with our luggage. Each of us brought one backpack and nothing else, and thank goodness because it was a tight squeeze in that car.

Amber going wild at our Carrefour stop.

French road trips are pastry-rific!

COUTANCES (pronounced coo-tah-ns)

So big.

I love old cobbles.

Posing in front of Jeff's second-floor missionary apartment. Those three windows above the store were his apartment.

I have a weakness for French flower shops.

Fleurs!

This peacock-shaped bush was impressive.

Playing in the small playground at the flower park. Amber filled her boot with rocks and dumped them on Rose's head. That's when we decided it was time to leave.

Comparison picture of World War II bombing damage. The cathedral itself was miraculously mostly unharmed, but the buildings around it weren't so lucky.

Stress is a too small parking area and an unexpectedly limited turning radius.