Monday, July 22, 2013

EU 2013 - Brittany



Sometimes when you want to get from point A to point B, you have constraints. These normally might be cost or availability but Brittany is a little more like Lake Bohinj in Slovenia where there is no nearby airport and you need a combination of planes, buses, and perhaps other options and it sucks up a full day of travel. Our itinerary:

- CPH-TXL (Berlin) SAS. Using UA miles to get to Paris. 30 min flight. 14:15-15:10

- 2h 40m layover at TXL. Bizarre airport in that there is no real "airside". At least for intra-Schengen flights there's an exit door right next to baggage claim. Terminal A is open to anyone off the street to enter, including shops, restaurants, and the LH Senator lounge if you have the correct ticket and status. Walked outside to get from terminal to terminal then back through security. Not sure anyone checked my passport prior to the TXL-CDG flight.

- TXL-CDG LH. 17:20-19:05 Nice flight. Normal LH selection of cheese or ham sandwich. Had a Warsteiner. Still generally like LH. So far so good.

- Air France bus to Gare Montparnasse via Gare du Lyon. 2 hour bus ride due to Sunday evening Paris traffic. 40 min spent winding around the CDG terminals from 1 to 3. 30 min into the ride, while sitting in traffic, someone asks the drive to turn off the AC. Queue an hour of roasting and near nausea.

- Roughly 12 hours after leaving our CPH hotel, we arrive at our Paris hotel. Could have taken a taxi or RER or really anything other than the bus to get there.

- Around 7 hours of sleep, which is pretty good. Get up to take a 3h train to St Malo.

- All told, 11am left CPH hotel on Sunday, arrive 14:00 Monday at La Villefromoy St Malo.



A fairly quick but very nice trip to visit St Malo, St Briac, Cancale, and meet up with Adrienne's family in St Brieuc.  Mixed weather with some sun and some rain. Not particularly warm. Fantastic meal at Restaurant l'Atelier in St Malo. Other meals were kind of mixed with shellfish and wine in Cancale being pretty good but fairly touristy and somewhat expensive and a couple restaurants in St Malo being expensive and not particularly good, but we were somewhat limited by our desire to eat later in the night, say after 9pm.

Hiking along the coast in Cancale was a highlight with great views of the water on one side and interesting houses on the other. The variance of the waterline due to tides is something else to look at, where boats are on the seabed at one point then the water returns a few hours later.




Much easier to leave the area with a €20 taxi ride to the Dinard airport for our Ryanair flight to London Stansted. Easy jet is a bit prickly about baggage weight but we planned perfectly and were right at the limits so no issues. They really jam a lot of seats into the plane and this one was surprisingly completely full. I suppose when you only have two or three flights a day from an airport that will happen.

Brittany travel basics: $1.30 for €1 at the time of our trip. Would have been much easier to fly to Dinard through London instead of our CPH-TXL-PAR-St. Malo trek. 3G cell and data again, this time from an Orange SIM ordered on eBay and activated by sending a passport scan to Orange at
blois.contrats@orange.com with the phone number. Created an account online at orange.fr as well to track progress as activation takes a couple days. 50Mb of internet for €2 per day for data activated through a menu system by dialing #123# and searching through the menus for Options then Internet. A bit tedious using their system of replies but worked out and 50Mb was fine for maps and email.

Additional photos at flickr.

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