I arrived back yesterday from the tail end of my almost-two week holiday with Mum & Dad. A brief summary follows.

A couple of Wednesdays ago, I spent the morning shopping, successfully for fruit & veg at les halles, but unable to find Decathlon, let alone the camping mattress I sought therein. Picking weary parents up from the station, we visited the Thabor briefly, before a generally unpleasant walk far out into the suburbs where we eventually found the aforementioned mattress. By the time we got home and got some gallettes cooked and eaten, the day was gone.

Over the next couple of days we walked a lot of Rennes, visiting churches, parks, and the old town, the latter having a particular impact, I think. It was good for me, too, since we got to some churches that I hadn't seen, and found an hour or so to kick my newly-arrived Sherrin around a park that I'd been meaning to visit. On the advice of luminita, who I bumped into at the Marché plus, we also caught a few hours of a multicultural festival at Triangle. On Saturday morning we visited the marché at place des liçes, and bought a kouign amann, something I'll have to find more of. In the evening we caught a screening of Touching The Void, spurred on by Mum having read the books, and my having read the reviews.

On Sunday we headed out to St Malo. We did the usual beach and walls walk, had a beer in a nice little square awash with English and other tourists, and then walked out to the camping ground on the western side of town, which has a great view of the bay and across to Dinan. By the time we got back to the station around 5, we realised that we'd probably walked a few kilometres too many for the day, and were glad to get back to Rennes.

By Monday, I was pretty much out of ideas, so it was probably a good thing that Gabrielle called from Paris to suggest that we catch an evening train and take an extra half-day in Paris.

The best thing of the 5 days, other than catching up with Mum & Dad, was that the additional numbers and increased time made it much easier to eat well. We had some good gallettes, an excellent potato soup with some potatoes that were near the end of their days, a nice stir-fry Sunday night, and excellent sandwiches in between. Ironically, we didn't open the two bottles of wine that I'd been saving for their arrival, so I'll have to hang onto them for another occasion.