Wednesday, June 1, 2011

Brittany - Day 4

The plan on the fourth day was to leave St Malo and go further west to an island called Ile-de-brehat. The idea was to drive till L'Arcouest and then take the ferry from there to the island. We left our hotels after breakfast at around 9 am. We all had liked St Malo very much and left it with a heavy heart. After reaching L'Arcouest around noon, we parked the car in the huge parking place along the coast to take the ferry. There were so many people making day trips there that we had to wait for the second ferry.


After arriving on the island, we felt hungry but decided to walk towards the central market rather than eating at the ferry port. K and I decided to get some sandwiches for everyone and in the meantime A and D went to check out the hotels. Now an interesting incident happened here. The guy making the sandwiches at the kiosk was an old man who could not speak a single word of English. I was trying to explain him that we wanted vegetarian sandwiches but all my hand signals went in vain. Incidentally, a guy passing by overheard my conversation in English and came to my rescue. He was a Canadian and said he had many Indian colleagues and knew that most of us eat vegetarian food. So he understood what I was trying to do there. He could not speak French himself so called his girlfriend from a distance and asked her to help us out. Sometimes I feel there is no dearth of good people in this world. So this is how we managed to eat our lunch that day.

In the meantime, A and D were back from their search and we were amazed that there was no free room available on the island. Everything was already booked. So while we were eating our sandwiches on a bench under the table near the kiosk, A was looking in the lonely planet book for a good place near the island to spend the night. He came up with the suggestion of a place called Perros-Guirec on the mainland but again along the coast. We all agreed to that and started exploring the island.



 
The island was very beautiful. There was a trail going through the island taking people to all the places around. We decided to follow it for a while. The island had some amazing and very well maintained houses one could die for. We guessed they might be of some rich people who come here and use them as vacation houses because island was mainly a tourist spot.


We walked a lot that day covering all the corners of the island and enjoying the views from each of them. We were also lucky to have an awesome weather all day.



So after burning our feet all day we came back to the starting point to take the ferry back to the mainland at around 5 pm. The plan was to now reach Perros-Guirec and stay there overnight. It was a short drive and we reached there in no time. But the town appeared to be a little dull to our expectations. Even though it had nice sandy beaches and all but still it appeared very artificial with few people around. We found a hotel in the city center and after taking a shower we all went for dinner. The place where we had dinner was run by an American woman much to our surprise so this time we were lucky with the language :)
 

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