Trebeurden to La Baule (LBP)

Sorry for the radio silence, we've been wifi (or wee-fee) less for the last few days. Luckily, nothing all that noteworthy has been going on. Outside of one extra day in Bordeaux, the routine has been: wake up, pain au chocolat and coffee, buy provisions and market, drive, lunch, drive, find hotel, beer, nap, dinner, sleep. We are now in San Sebastian (in Espana!). I'll try to get some updates up of the last few days.

Note that this blog has LBP in the title. That stands for "L"ong, "B"oring "P"ost. These are intended for those, like our parents, that REALLY want to know where we're at. They are also intended to help document the trip for ourselves. We make no guarantees that these posts will be interesting, or funny. Please do not stop reading our blog just because the LBPs are long and boring, just skip them and read the non-LBPs. OK, here goes this LBP:

Trebeurden to La Baule

We started looking at the date in Trebeurden, and the map, and the car rental info that showed when we had to return our car in Perpignan (about where the Pyrenees meet the Mediterranean), and realized that if we wanted to spend any time at all in Basque country (where we now have this luxurious internet access with which to post), we’d have to start moving a bit quicker. So, we cut the nose off of the Brittany peninsula (called the “head of the world” in the local tongue), and made a bee-line for St Nazaire. St Nazaire is a city about a third of the way towards Basque-land. And that made it seem a perfect candidate.

Before driving, we made a last circuit around Trebeurden (we didn’t see either Jean-Louis or Bernard, they were probably sleeping it off) and grabbed coffee and some pains au chocolate. We also saw that the weekly market was getting started.

The day before we hadn’t seen any grocery stores, and had started to wonder. It appears like this is the answer. A wonderful weekly market full of fresh produce, cheese makers, butchers, umbrella sellers, clothes sellers, and a woman with the largest pan in the world. When we first walked past this woman, she was frying up some gigantic sausages (no big deal, we thought: they’re just gigantic sausages). We passed a Vietnamese cooked food truck (and we thought food trucks we’re the new hip thing -- this guy’s been bringing his food truck to markets across Northern Brittany since 1983). We stopped and got a galette (savory crepe) with egg to supplement the pains au chocolat. We passed by the woman with the pan again, she had added potatoes, lots and lots of potatoes, to the gigantic sausages in the largest pan in the world. We say to each other: mmm, that’s how you cook potatoes! We then start preparing for lunch, we get some ham that had been cooked in deliciousness, some cheese and some peaches.
We pass the woman again, now she has added huge chunks of lardons (like bacon, but more like Canadian bacon, but even more so: thick and juicy) to the lots and lots of potatoes, cooked with the gigantic sausages in the largest pan in the world. She stirred all of this with a giant wooden shovel looking thing. I conjured up some French: “When will this be ready?” She answered: in 2 hours, which would be just in time for lunch. Knowing that we had a long drive ahead of us, we made a painful decision: we would not be able to eat this. Tears practically streaming from our eyes, we made our way back down to our hotel, where we put our food in the car, and got a-driving.

Recipe Note: for those who want more info about the woman with the largest pan in the world, she was cooking a dish where she cooks potatoes with sausage and bacon in butter and cider. When we get home, you are all invited to the many many times I will try to get this right. Granted, we never tried it, but it looked like one of those things that should bring you closer to god, so, I figure we have a goal.

We ate our lunch sitting on a step in the church parking lot in Baud, and it then began to rain. We continued driving.

As we got near St Nazaire, we realized there was a somewhat smaller city nearby, La Baule. After a snap decision, knowing even less about it than St Nazaire, we went there. We navigated the crazy city streets of round-abouts and left turn lanes that cross oddly across the street, and finally parked the car. I’ll do a full post about driving in France later, but let me just say that while a great way to get to smaller places, it is a full-on adventure.

Notes on La Baule: (1) it is an ocean resort town, forming a quarter-moon about a bay, (2) it is a rich ocean resort town, very unlike the previous towns we had been in (Kate and I nicknamed it The-Grove-sur-Mer -- reference to The Grove in LA, not the coffee shops in SF), (3) we saw a lot of bottle-blonds. (4) it is a lovely place to spend a few hours in the rain.