Instasamedi {Summer 2012}

C'est samedi !  

C'est le mois de septembre !

Back to school is just around the corner...

Back to blogging, however?   

That starts NOW!!!

You know what?

To sum up my summer (!) 

I've decided to share some Instagram photos.

My (fallen into disrepair) Instasamedi feature 

usually tells you about my week via seven photos.

But today?  I've allowed myself to post a dozen!  Pourquoi ?

Well, it's been 12 weeks since my last post {eeeeek!}

So without further ado, on y va ?

juin

We spent the last week of June on Belle-Île-en-Mer, 

which is {as its name suggests} a beautiful island 

off the Atlantic coast of Brittany.

One of the island's many gorgeous beaches

Sandy feet?  Yes please!

On the way to & from Brittany
{which involved train, métro, train again, bus, ferry...}
we stopped for a night or two in Paris to see friends 
& fancy stuff like this: 

Sacré Coeur, je t'adore !

juillet
July was mostly spent in & around Annecy.
Highlights?
The three-day Musilac Festival,
time spent with my mom in Zee Middle-of-Nowhere, France
{where she & a few of her friends had rented a place}
& lots of sunshine.

Yes, we saw LMFAO at Musilac.
{But please note:  this is NOT mon mari & moi !!!}

Rush hour in the village where my mom stayed...

Shadowy self-portrait in front of Annecy's Hôtel de Ville {= City Hall}

août

August was full-on vacation mode.

We spent a week in the Cantal region of France,

which is full of pretty villages, {long-dormant} volcanoes & cheese.

See that open window?  That's where FQ's grandpa lived as a child.

Cheese please! 

And then?

A week in Ireland!

I.  Loved.  It.

Pub perfection in Dublin.

Rainy yet festive?  That works for me!

It seems that the Irish love bad puns.  Moi aussi !

Me hanging out with the Irish Sea.

So there you go.

Feel back in the loop?  Moi aussi... ooof !

More soon, I promise...

Alors à bientôt & bon week-end tout le monde !

Brittany: Cookie Central

So remember when I told you about our home base in Brittany

being so close to the ocean & its self-serve seafood?

Well, there was one more great thing about Saint Michel Chef-Chef.

The town itself was pretty small.

 There was one main street with a bakery, a post office, a church 

& the local café/restaurant

{which seemed to specialize in mussels... & Aussie beer!}

But the most exciting thing by far?

The Saint Michel cookie factory 

museum/gift shop/outlet store.

Whee!!!

You see, a baker based in Saint Michel Chef-Chef

at the beginning of the century starting producing yummy galettes

{basically, sugar cookies made with tons of butter... yum!}

His clever wife had the idea, back in 1905, 

to hit the beach & sell these delicious treats to the tourists

who were surely famished after breathing in all that sea air.

inside the boutique: looks like tourists are still pretty hungry these days

Of course 

we couldn't spend a couple weeks in Saint Michel Chef-Chef &

not hit up cookie central.

We watched a short film on the history of the biscuiterie,

looked at some old photos & cookie tins in display cases
& browsed all the products on the shelves.

 
You can still buy the original galettes,
although they've expanded a lot to include many other types of cookies
like madelines {my personal favourites... mmm!} 

As for the most surprising cookie in the boutique,
it was definitely this one:

If you're familiar with Australia's famous Tim Tams, 

you might wonder if these chocolate-filled cookies

are reason enough to cause an international incident.

Or maybe there's some kind of  

Brittany/Down Under alliance?

That would surely explain why on earth 

you could have a pint of Foster's 

alongside your moules-frites in Saint Michel Chef-Chef!

Brittany: Fishing

I usually take a break from blogging over the weekend.

But you know what?

I have so many photos & stories to share with you 

about our time in Brittany

that I figured I may as well post on Saturday!

As you saw yesterday, we stayed in Saint Michel Chef-Chef, 

just a hop, a skip & a jump from the beach.

Although I took lots of pictures of the waves, 

the seagulls & the sand,

I was especially enamoured with these fishing huts.

There was something so charming about them.

Imagine my excitement when I saw some real-life fishermen types

(one complete with a yellow rainslicker!)

climbing up into one of the huts.

Those weren't the only people we saw fishing down at our local beach.

In fact, everybody seemed to be at it.

What were they all looking at, you wonder?

Mussels!!!

We didn't want to be left out.

So guess what we did?

Yep, went fishing.  

Or mussel-ing.  Whatever.

We spent several hours of a rainy & windy afternoon

down at the beach during low-tide,

collecting mussels,

scraping the barnacles off them

& chucking them into a bucket.

It was great.

But even better?

The meal FQ made that night.

He cooked our mussels in a very simple cider sauce

(leaving plenty in the bottle for us to drink, of course!)

Dinner was delicious.

All our hard work 

(by which I mean wind-burned cheeks 

& barnacle scrapes on our fingers!) 

was so worth it.

Our mussel day was one of my favourite parts of our vacation.

Cheers to le chef !

Brittany: Saint Michel Chef-Chef

Ready to head to Brittany?

On y va!

If you've been reading this blog for a little while,

you may remember when I went into a photo-taking frenzy chez nous

because we had signed up to a home exchange site, Trocmaison.

Well, shortly after creating our profile, we lucked out 

& quickly agreed to exchange our apartment in Annecy

for the beach house belonging to a couple of teachers

on France's Atlantic coast.

I'll be honest: at first, I figured that the best part of the exchange

would surely be the incredibly catchy name 

of the seaside village we'd be in:

Saint Michel Chef-Chef.

C'est impossible to tire of saying that name.  

Just try!

Keep saying it!

Another dozen times!

See?

welcome to town

But once we arrived, 

I saw that our little beach-side abode was small, comfy & charming.

home sweet home exchange

living room/dining room/kitchen all in one!

But the best part? 

In less than five minutes, we could walk to this:

And see this:

And beach-comb to our hearts' delight like this:

And gaze upon this:

As you can tell from the photos, it wasn't always sunny & warm.

In fact, most days we wore our windbreakers & hiking boots

& we got rained on quite often.

But you know what?

That's Brittany & I'm a West Coast girl.

It was just so wonderful to be so close to the ocean again.

No reason to be crabby about the weather!