Hello Brittany!

After successfully getting our rental car (much quicker than Italy -- kudos to Paris Hertz!), we headed out of town and even mastered driving in the notorious Champ De Eleyse circle where those IN the roundabout have to yield to those entering from outside. Apparently there are so many tourists related wrecks here that insurance companies have worked out a 50/50 claim process. We were lucky to know this and escaped unscathed if not a little flustered.

Driving in France is much more civilized than Italy, though we did have trouble finding our way out of the city to our highway. Luckily, Court’s map reading skills are improving and she guessed right on the route. The French countryside is breathtaking, with fields of cows, corn and little French farmhouses and barns. We decided not to linger at a very crowded French rest stop, and ate our sandwiches in the car. You see, it was raining. And very cold. More on that later.
We arrived in the sweet little village of Gouarec where we found our campsite and the cheery people who run Breton Bikes. Kate and Geoff quickly welcomed us and got us outfitted with two tents, four bikes and camping gear which will serve as home and transport for the next week. Hopefully the weather will improve, but just in case we went to a French version of Kmart down the road and got some sweatshirts and two rain jackets for the ride. Olympia weather we were not expecting in France in July and apparently it is quite unusual but you have to go with the flow when you travel abroad we have learned.

We found a nice little pizza restaurant with large picnic style tables and dined on wood-fired pizza (which is not really French food, Hal pointed out), salad and yummy creamy desserts of mousse and meringue. Happily full, we tottled back to our tents, climbed into our mummy bags and went to sleep.

Tomorrow is a short ride apparently (about 10 miles) so we’ll have time to pack up tomorrow. We’ll leave most of our stuff behind in our bags in the car at the campsite.

There is no internet apparently in these little towns so we’ll have to update you at week’s end. Here’s to no flat tires or broken bones!