Bonjour Friends! It’s been ten days since I left Victoria’s chilly climes and landed in France, so I’m due to pen a postcard. I’m nibbling on a little baguette and cheese (Reblochon fermier) and sitting at the table in a studio apartment in Lorient. It’s in the south of Brittany out on the west coast of France. I’m spending most of time in this region as it’s very Celtic and I’m on the hunt for Breton music and dance.

I flew into Paris and had three days there, under a stormy sky. As the French would say, it rained like a pissing cow, or more politely, it rained in ropes. Despite getting lost many times as tried to recalibrate my internal compass to the northern hemisphere (It gets me every time – my sense of north is pegged on the angle of the sun, which is of course the opposite here!) But walking is what I do when I’m travelling, meandering down side streets to see where they take me, trying to avoid death at crossings and dog poo on footpaths, taking in architecture and people as they go about daily life, and usually learning song lyrics as I stroll.

Paris was, as always, beautiful and impressive, but oh so very chaotic. I think I must admit that I’m a country girl at heart and the madness of a big city is somewhat overwhelming for my senses – traffic, constant honking and sirens, people shouting, and everyone rushing hither and thither, like the White Rabbit in Alice in Wonderland.  And the smells, good lord, the smells! My super snout is great for wine tasting, but in Paris it is constantly assaulted by an amalgam of eau de rubbish, urine, dog poo, and centuries old rot, with the odd whiff off baking and perfume to take the edge off. I was staying in a very African neighbourhood, so add the smell of butchers, fishmongers and spices to the mix.

But there are always two sides to the coin, and this is the price you pay for the concentration of culture in the form of museums, galleries, restaurants, bars and people, in all their different guises. The Musée de la Mode (Fashion Museum) had a wonderful exhibition on the influence of Versailles fashion through time – the universe perhaps giving me a little prod to revisit my Versailles project? And I learned all kinds of things at the Musée du Fromage (Cheese Museum), tasting included, bien sûr!

It was lovely to escape Paris and head out to Brittany on Friday in my ride share. I was sitting next to a delightful young filmmaker who had been in Paris working on the tennis coverage, and we talked art, life and travel all the way. I had a few days in Vannes, a fancy seaside town, and quite beautiful with its half-timbered houses and 19th century stonework. The town itself would not have been so lovely had I not met Flo and her partner Thierry, a friend of a Canadian-Australian friend (thanks Bev!). She’s a language teacher and musician and we got along like a house on fire. Thierry is a musician too and they’ve given me a whole stack of things to do and people to meet in traditional music. We spent a glorious afternoon taking the boat out to the Ile d’Arz in the bay, walking around, listening to Thierry play his pipes on the pier, and singing in the old, old church.

Now I’m in Lorient, which is not at all pretty. The Germans had a base here during WWII and the allies bombed it to smithereens. So it’s a great example of post-war architecture done on a budget and in a hurry. Very square, concrete and grey, with a bit of paint for colour, but mostly grey. There’s a huge naval construction base here and a lot of wind. I tried to find a nice spot to sit and play my fiddle this afternoon, but failed miserably. I had a good walk though!

One of the things I love about travelling is discovering the small things that are actually much more important than you think. Like the wind – I’m really not used to being in windy places because I don’t live near the coast and it disturbs me. Probably because that kind of wind at home is the sign of a big storm coming. I had also never realised how important my morning coffee is. Not just the caffeine injection, but the act of making a coffee. Apparently it’s an integral start to my day and I’m a little lopsided without it. There is a coffee machine in my apartment in Lorient and it is making my mornings happy.

On the subject of beverages, the bells have just chimed 6pm, so I think it’s time to go and have a glass of cider in the bar I was in yesterday. It’s a traditional Celtic bar with a warm old pub vibe, playing trad music, with the beer taps made from musical instrument bits (flutes and pipes and the like).

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