Our journey beginsTake Off, AustraliaTransit in SingaporeThe place where the books are black.London on footOxford, United KingdomNever again, so long as I may live.Markets and musicals... cliche much?Last days in LondonIch bin ein Jam-DonutI like your Altstadt better than your NeustadtBrezl bigger than your head!Ze castle of ze crazy KingMalvenue à Paris!Tuesday? What Tuesday?!The Louvre in 30 secondsThat Spears bird has given Brittany a bad name...Let the wine flow freely!A very Gaudí dayMontserrat, SpainValencia, SpainMadrid, SpainThe moment of truth!Restaurant Gordon RamsayThere... and back again.
 | kitandbeau |  | Kit and Beau's European... |  | That Spears bird has given... |
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Jul 3 2008, 09:30 PM
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Location
Quimper, France
We arrived in Quimper a day earlier than planned, having compressed the entirety of Paris into a day and a half. We had to book an extra night in an extra cheap hotel €30 [$45ish] is a bargain, if you're prepared to sleep in what was almost a space shuttle capsule of a room, minus the potential for awesomeness inherent in a space shuttle capsule... After our first unexciting night, we moved to our proper hotel, which was an improvement of at least 5 stars on the previous, while still being nowhere near 5 itself.
Our first day was spent uninterestingly doing the washing, so I'll skip ahead to the the wedding. The evening before, all of the many family and friends from afar (being a multinational wedding) congregated at the groom's grandmother's house on a quiet country road past the outskirts of town. We were given what passes for an address in these parts: a boat shop after which to turn left at some indeterminate point, and the promise of a well-ballooned signpost. Meanwhile, in my best French (think, "Me Tarzan, you taxi!"), we managed to navigate there quite successfully, even in the absence of the promised balloons.
The day of the wedding the driver thankfully knew the church, so we arrived without fuss. It was a wonderfully old building (someone else's photo here), and the ceremony was lovely, albeit mostly in French (we're a little rusty on our Catholic hymns in French...). It was the church where, apparently, generations of the groom's family had been married, so there was a lot of tradition for our Aussie Amelia to uphold. The reception and dinner was wonderful, and it certainly got us thinking about our own when we get back into Australia. I can just imagine the caper Dad would get up to giving a father-of-the-groom speech now...
We used the early part of the next day to explore the township, which we hadn't much had the opportunity to do yet. Quimper is built over the river Odet, which must be more vigorous at other times of the year, because it was nary a trickle while we were there, despite the proliferation of bridges crossing it, joining the two lanes of the main street. There was another beautiful cathedral (you may have noticed the photos from everywhere so far are mostly churches, bridges, and statues of people on sticks... yes, we have noticed a pattern!) The other fascinating thing about Brittany (Bretagne) is that it is bilingual, with French and a Celtic language (related to Irish, Scottish Gaelic, Manx and Welsh, via its close proximity to the coast of the Great Britain), and almost all of the street signs are in both languages, as you'll see.
Which takes us to Bordeaux, which you'll get to read about next!!
K&B
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Written by Debb 61 months ago
Having great fun reading your blog. will ring tonight. love, M and D
too busy to blog
Written by chrisden 61 months ago
A blog smaller than your....er...toe. How can we stay envious if you don't tantalize us?