French by Choice – Our Travels

Another sunny day, but a little cooler! We drove the 60 miles plus or minus (about 1 hour and ten minutes) to Quimper.  We parked along the quai along the Odet River.  Quimper is also at the confluence of two rivers: Odet and Steir.  The bridges/walkways over the Odet were all festooned with boxes filled with lovely annuals – still beautiful in October.  The cathedral and the museum of Breton life were on our left, across the Odet.   We crossed over, the landscape crew was replacing the summer annuals with winter color and cleaning and compressing the stone dust walkways.

We had time before lunch-closing to walk through the museum.  The museum had a collection of artifacts back to prehistoric times.  I was most interested in the folk costume collection; and Kimberly in the faïence collection.  The museum itself is housed in the former bishop’s house – attached to the cathedral.  By the time we left the cathedral, it was closed for the lunch hour.  We cruised the two squares (Laennes and St-Corentin), remodeled to feature a statue of Rene Laennec, inventor of the stethoscope and a carousel  from the early 1900’s with a submarine-like coach that looked like a Jules-Verne type feature.

We walked along several of Quimper’s streets with timber-framed houses (rue de Boucheries, rue de Kereon, rue St Francois) on our way to the covered market, filled by now with students on their lunch hour.  The market was filled with fresh fruits, vegetables, wonderful cheeses, meats, pates, prepared foods, and of course seafood of all kinds even sardines.  This was the first market where we saw multiple kinds of clams.   There was even a fresh pasta booth and sushi and sashimi!  The market was filled with locals, buying items for their supper.

We decided to get crepes for lunch and went to Creperie de la Place au Beurre, 2 bis Place au Beurre.  We had a assortment of crepes: mine was oinions cooked in red and white wine, Kimberly had scallops in her crepe, Glenn had ham, cheese, mushrooms with a cream sauce, Mike had a crepe with eggs, ham, tomatoes cuisinnee, mushrooms and cream sauce with a bit of salad.  We chose to try the brut cidre to accompany our meal.  For dessert we tried crepes with chocolate and crepes with chocolate and coconut.

We cruised the town a little more, checking out the shopping and all the old buildings.  Then back to the cathedral, which was now open.  The cathedral is dedicated to St Corentin, the first bishop of Quimper, who left his existence as hermit to become the leader of the Quimper congregation.  The cathedral dates to the 13th century and is light and airy due to the ribbed vaulting and flying buttress construction. The choir was built out of align with the nave to take advantage of an older chapel containing the tomb of Alain Canhart, instrumental in repelling the Norman invasion of 913.  The sun was streaming through the stained glass windows during our visit and we had a exceptional view of these windows constructed during the 15th or 16th century in a local workshop. The brilliant colors were a wonder to behold.  The pulpit of wood with medallions of gilt wood carved to feature events in the life of St Corentin.  The Romanesque nave was rebuilt in the 15th century and contains the tombs of all the bishops of Quimper.

We left the cathedral to explore the rest of the center of town.  On our way back to the car, Kimberly and I went into to the post office to get stamps for her postcards to the US.  The stamps were .85 euros each.  Glenn took photos of the spires of the church while we negotiated for stamps and Mike went back to the car to make sure we didn’t get a ticket.

We stopped by the Faiencerie-HB-Henriot to look at their faience which is reputed to be the last of the factories to still produce pieces with freehand decoration.  We looked at the offerings in two nearby shops and the difference in quality was quite evident. We even saw a platter that was priced at 3,900 euros – it was very similar to several we saw in the museum in terms of colors, intensity, and intricacy of design.

We left Quimper and headed back southeast to Locmariaquer, a resort town on the edge of the Bay of Morbihan, noted for its megaliths.  The town was cute, but everything was closed up tighter than a drum and dinner there was out of the question. The megaliths are located just up from the cemetery, on a knoll overlooking the bay.  The Table des Marchands is a Neolithic grave dating to 3700 BC.  The site of the megaliths also houses the Grand Menhir Brise, dating from 4500 BC, it is 65 feet long (tall).  It is broken into four pieces and is the largest known menhir in the western world.  We drove home through St-Philebert and Trinite-sur-Mer on our way back to Carnac.  First stop was for wine at the Super U, then home to take a bottle of wine to the beach and watch the sundown and the magic of the dusk light on the beach. We collected a few shells and walked the two blocks home.  Instead of dining out, we finished up some of our cheeses and snacks and had left over fish soup, vowing to try one of the restaurants tomorrow that looked so lively in Trinte-sur-Mer as we drove through.