No sleep then a 3-boat day.

Holy crap what a night! The freakin moron next to us didn’t shut his radio until 5:30AM. The sun was actually coming up. And three people came over during the long night to try to tell him to lower it but then a long conversation would ensue, and he still wouldn’t lower it. In the States there definitely would have been a fight, but here they had a mostly calm discussion. Kind of weird. April wanted me to go say something, but three people had already tried so I figured it was hopeless since couldn’t even engage in the right conversation.

Anyway April kept getting more angry as the night wore on. I was actually falling in/out of sleep, until she would wake me up. Plus as you all know, I’m the master of staying calm nowadays.

We wanted to get an early start so after a 2-3 hour sleep we awoke at ~8:00 and got out of there quickly. As we were packing the wankster next door has his puppies running loose. April’s stuff was in a pile on the ground and one of the dogs grabs the toilet paper and runs away. So April has to chase after the dog and yell at it to get the TP back. Talk about Salt in the wound. It was really funny.

We headed back up the Quiberon peninsula and got on a great bike path. We detoured for about a mile to look at the surfing beach. Sure enough it was really sweet. 3-5 foot swells, perfect breaks, I counted over 100 surfers spread across about 1-2 miles, and it was still early in the morning.

Ok back on the bike path, it curved around and followed the shore. Then we finally hit a road, no traffic, we could really move, finally. Then we had the option for the path again. April loves the freakin paths. I’m trying to be a serious cyclist here. I’m imagining I’m in the tour de france, shirt open, sweating bullets, straining up the Alp d’Heuz, lean and mean, cool sunglassses. Instead we’re riding along with kids and middle-aged ladies all on upright bikes; bonjour madam! Ca-va?

So of course we take the sandy bike path. Sigh. It was pretty but there was this beautiful deserted road right near us. Anyway we hit the little town of Etel and we going to have to get on a busy road to cross this inlet. We passed a Tourist Info place and were asking directions to avoid the busy road, when the guy says just take the little ferry. He comes outside and even shows us where it is; sure enough there’s the boat coming in right now. Awesome. It cost about 1E and takes 2-3 minutes to cross. Huge winner. Then we found out there was another boat that would avoid the highway going in to Lorient. After we did our mildly lost meandering for about an hour or two we got to the next inlet. We headed down to the port and April was starved.

There were two restaurants there, I suggested the one that seemed more high-end. I ordered a steak frites, and April didn’t like the menu much but she orders an Andouille suusage. She had a sausage in a roll the previous day and it was ok. The food comes, and April starts gagging when the plate is put in front of her. It turns out this sausage is made from pig tripe (stomach lining). The sausage was cut into slices, displayed beautifully across the plate, it was totally undercooked, was all pink and shimmery from the stomach lining, and it had the most god-awful barnyard smell you can imagine. Smelled like stinky feet on a dead person that had been buried in pig shit. Seriously. I took a bite, I couldn’t even swallow it. It tasted as bad as it smelled. Worse single thing I’ve ever tasted in my life. So she sends it back, of course the waiter and chef are confused and offended; and she lost her appetite. I ate my steak while she fumed. Of course it was my fault for suggesting the expensive restaurant. Ha-ha. She never orders the right thing. No skills.

Off we go to catch the ferry, we go thru Loriet, a bigger town, but there’s no traffic cause it’s Sunday. In fact we kick ass on the larger road as the gradients are better than our small back roads. It’s hot. I’m pouring sweat, we’re finally doing some serious riding on real road!

We get to the coast at Fort Bloque and it’s packed. Feels like Hampton beach. But the interesting thing is the French don’t seem to snack that much. They were all walking to the beach with just a towel. Not tons of food like we would have in the States. It also means there’s a lot less trash. The trash buckets are never full cause there’s no cokes and big macs to full them up. We stop for a drink and April get a great tip from the waiter for a hotel in the next town and that there’s a pedestrian bridge up ahead so we can avoid another highway. We call ahead and reserve a room.

BTW - While we were having our drink, two different circus convoys passed us on the road. They have a ton of small local circuses here. We’ve passed 3-4 already. These are smallish types of circuses, if you’ll remember the Big Apple circus, where we brought the kids when they were young, was modeled after these small Euro circuses.

We head off and aim for the pedestrian bridge, can’t find it, ask at a bar and sure enough the guy runs out and shows us another boat to cross a channel. It will lead us right to our town/hotel. What a life-saver as we were pretty hot and burnt out by now; long day, no sleep the previous night, too much traffic on a couple of the roads, and don’t forget that tripe for lunch.

We land in the town, ride up a killer hill looking for our Auberge, can’t find it, ask around and it’s back down the hill where the boat arrived. Down we go, find the place, it’s got a different name but it is the place we called ahead to. The room is good. Cool. Quiet. Water-view. Cool old building. Great dinner: clams in butter/garlic, I get a scallop/fish dish in a white broth, April got a scallop brochette, we shared a huge plate of home-made fries, and a salad, accompanied by a nice chilled dry white wine. Plus a April got a flotette (custard with little boats of meringue floating on top) and I got a peach melba. We were stuffed. We hot the sack and passed out by 9:00. Great sleep.

A geography note: we’re currently touring along the south central coast of Brittany. The main highways are about 10 miles inland. And there are a series of inlets, rivers, ports all along the coast. There is no coastal road. But there are many different back roads that make their way across the farms/fields/villages along the coast. So we’re zigzagging along the coast. Often crossing the inlets by tiny ferry, sometimes having to ride 5-10 miles inland to get around and back down to the coast.