In September, SanaĂ« and I made a trip to France to see family. We spent three of those days in Bretagne, in and around Rennes.Â
Patrick, Sanaë’s father, grew up in Janzé, a small town, 30km outside of Rennes. Maurice, her grandfather, took over a small cider production when he married Madeleine, whose health did not allow for her to remain on the family farm. Maurice, now 88, still tends to his orchard and vegetable garden every day. When we visited, it was time to harvest the hundreds of golden chestnuts that had already fallen from Maurice’s carefully tended trees.
Rennes’ history spans back two thousand years. The city’s old uneven facades hide a swiss cheese of small alleys, courtyards, and wooden staircases that seem as old as the city itself. The beautiful Parc du Thabor contains a small orangerie, a greenhouse for the protection of citrus trees in the cold winter months (which stretch long in Bretagne!) I imagine Sanaë’s grandparents, Maurice and Madeleine, walking through these shaded alleys in the early 1950s, discussing Maurice’s plan for the cider business, wondering whether it would allow the two to marry and achieve the life sought for each other.
Thabor’s botanical garden, built in the 1860s, harbors several thousand varieties of plants, including roses of all scents and colors… and names! Names of stars - Shakespeare, Aznavour; places - Naples, Paris; some names more inspiring than others - Colibri, Paradise.
Bretagne is all wind and water. The exciting stuff happens on its miles and miles of craggly coastline. Cancale and its beautiful Port de la Houle was once the starting point of many fishing expeditions to Terre-Neuve, across the Atlantic. In 1545, King François Ier made Cancale his official oyster furnisher, and today some 100 million oysters are extracted from the bay each year. We chose to skip the oysters shucked fresh on the Pointe du Grouin and instead had the most delicious crêpes at Breizh Café, where the chef mixes local Bretagne ingredients with Japanese inspiration.
A quick stop at Epices Roellinger, where we traveled the world with our nose.
After Cancale, the obvious next stop is Saint Malo. The sky was leaden as we drove down the coast, then strolled up the beach and into the old town through its thick ramparts. Light reflected in the wet, gentle sloping of the tide, and in places it wasn’t at all obvious where land ended and sky began. We got chills imagining what these damp walls might have felt like in the 1940s when this city was a bastion of German occupation.Â
