Only a few more days here, and I’m not even close to caught up, so you’ll probably be hearing about France for a while yet. Hope you don’t mind! This mini-adventure actually happened on June 6th.

I’ve always loved blues, the color in all its various hues and shades, and the music, whether haunting or funky. Not so much the emotion, but I suppose even that can have a certain tender poignancy sometimes.

Jacky, Pascale and I headed back to Île de Ré a few days after I  moved into Le Patio. Fortunately, this year was mostly about the color.

Shimmering, shifting blues and greens so stunning I could barely catch my breath. I had to remind myself to put down my camera occasionally and just soak it in.

We started with lunch in Saint-Martin-de-Ré in Le Belem, the same restaurant  where we lunched with David in 2017. Then on out to the western end of the island. where I took the picture that you sometimes see at the top of these posts (and most of those above). A lot more cairns now.

Pascale and I climbed the lighthouse this year, something we had not done on past visits.

Gorgeous views in every direction. . .

The island that day was an absolute celebration of color. And not just blues and greens.  The coquelicots were carpeting the fields in bright orange-red.

Then just as we were leaving, we caught a glimpse of the famous donkeys of Île de Ré that wear pants and give rides to children. Jacky obligingly stopped to let us jump out AGAIN for photos. None of them were wearing culottes, since they were off-duty, but this one was posing like a model. I couldn’t resist. The more traditional shaggy ones were all dozing in the sun, facing away from us. Not the ideal photo angle.

This post, with the uncooperative photo subjects and the blues and reds, is starting to remind me of an old post from our adventures in Key West 2015. Another memory that makes me smile.

There was certainly a moment the emotional kind of blues threatened, when we came upon the tree where David and Jacky sat for this photo in 2017. . .

I even took a photo of the empty branch with the beautiful sea behind it, but it’s too sad. I had to remind myself to be grateful we were even able to get back to this place he loved. I am.

It is not happiness that makes us grateful. It’s gratefulness that makes us happy.  —David Steindl-Rast

Wishing you both gratitude and happiness!

Here it is mid-June and I’m still writing about May, but there you go. Sunday, the 26 of May, we were headed home to La Rochelle in the afternoon, but in the morning we had a chance to tour a bit of the southern edge of the Golfe du Morbihan, including the Château de Suscinio, which was so enormous I couldn’t manage to fit it into one photo. Plus, the sky was rather dreary and it was breezy and cool, so I didn’t spend a lot of time trying.  I promise you can find photos if you Google it.

The back section you see in the photo below houses an elaborate and creative exhibit devoted to the legends of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table.

Turns out Bretagne has as much claim to the legends as Grand Bretagne has. This was news to me, probably because my main exposure to the legends was T. H. White’s The Once and Future King (which I loved) and Hollywood, including Disney.

Château de Suscinio was built to house various dukes of Brittany, and even housed Henry Tudor,  later King Henry VII of England, for a while, but I found these two characters in one of the rooms claiming to be the châtelain and châtelaine!  Although I’m not sure why they were not wearing  these fab red shoes.

Another story of ruin and restoration, this château at one point had been completely abandoned and was in the process of being dismantled, serving simply as a source of stone. It is still a work in progress, but what has been done is very impressive, with various interactive exhibits (obviously–see Pascale and Jacky above).  Well worth the price of admission.  Bonus: No creepy, crumbling, dark staircases.

Pascale made sure to buy a final Kouign Amann to have at home. And of course she had the ice cream, the whipped cream and the caramel sauce to go with it. No tiny Breton flag though. Somehow, we managed to eat it anyway!

Our four-day adventure in Bretagne was an amazing whirlwind of beauty and history, although I have to admit that my ability to accurately take in thousands of years of history and legend, all in French, remains moderate, at best. Still. I loved every minute of it. Many thanks to Pascale for all the careful planning, and to Jacky for all the nerve-wracking driving around a bazillion roundabouts, while the GPS only sometimes helped.  But what’s an adventure without a bit of losing your way?  It was fabulous and I’ll never forget it.

So sorry! I’m really far behind on these posts. I’ve been crazy busy. Lots of French lessons with Natacha . . .

. . . who FINALLY let me take her picture, although she kept trying to hide behind Solal!

Also, I’ve been doing as much homework as I can get her to give me and creating my own when I don’t have enough from her. (Yes, I’m THAT kind of student.) I am here partly to improve my French after all.

Plus, there have been lunches, apéros, dinners, concerts, day-trips, and I just got back from an overnight with Pascale and Jacky down to Cap Ferret, Arcachon and environs. But I don’t want to miss sharing a few more photos of beautiful Bretagne (where Stéphane is from, by the way, though further north than where we were). So without further ado, here is Bretagne, Part 4.

Saturday, the 25th of May, we went inland. One of my favorite spots was the beautiful little village of Rochefort-en-Terre, where first we toured the grounds of the Château de Rochefort-en-Terre. Below is a shot looking down on the town from the grounds of the château.

It made me think about how wonderfully photogenic these old buildings are and what a responsibility it is to maintain them. But look how beautiful the main square is . . . .

Later in the afternoon we stopped here . . .

The 14th century octagonal keep you see on the left was the only building open, so Pascale and I climbed up the tiniest, creepiest, dim staircase–my fault, the beginning of the larger baron’s staircase looked darker at the beginning. But never mind, we made it up VERY high until I started noticing random wooden supports for ENORMOUS stones and sections of wall that would otherwise tumble down. The floors were already long gone, burned, I think, or rotted away or both. I decided this ruin had not  yet been restored quite enough to make me comfortable four of five stories above ground with tons of stone precariously perched around me. Pascale was unfazed, but I decided to climb back down tout de suite (NOW).

I’ll leave you with another gem, the Château de  Trédion . . .

. . . that we were not able to see up close, because a wedding had taken over the place. Not a bad setting for a fairy-tale wedding!

It takes years and years and LOTS of funding, as I’m sure you can imagine, to restore and maintain these treasures. Of course, all good things, if they are to remain good things, require care and attention. I am so grateful for those willing and able to do what it takes.

Wishing you beautiful things–and more importantly, relationships–worth caring for and the motivation and resources to do so!