Rennes is adorable! The center of town is still made up of rickety-looking, tudor-style buildings that tilt this way and that, and are painted bright colors. They look like they might fall down if you exhale emphatically or look at them sideways. Rennes is the capital of the greatest province in all of France (and every last department): Bretagne! Brittany is in the Western-most region of France quite near England. It's so close, in fact, that it shares many of the ancient celtic cultural traditions of the English isles such as monolithic monuments and some traditional cuisine and dress. This unique background makes Brittany different from any other region of France. The regional language, or patois, of Bretagne is closely related to Cornish and Welsh, from (can you guess?) Cornwall and Wales. There is also a strong celtic folk music movement in Brittany which revived the old tunes and instruments and reintroduced them into modern music. Go Bretons!
What is there to see in Brittany? Well, plenty. The coast of Brittany is dotted with small fishing towns which are quaint and serve unbelievable fish platters. Periwinkles, snails, tiny shrimp, big ol' crabs, coquilles st-Jacques (scallops) and raw muscles and oysters are popular, as are my personal favorites, langoustines (like small lobster/crawfish), served steamed with mayonnaise. One coastal town you may have already heard of is called Saint-Malo. It's a walled city that is hugely popular during the summer months, when it only rains 6 out of 7 days in the week. I wish I were joking...Saint-Malo has a wonderful, rich background in piracy and smuggling to nearby England. Now the city is a wonderful place to walk, sit on an old cannon overlooking the sea on a giant stone wall, go to a fancy, purified salt-water spa, or eat kouign amann. What's that? Mmmm, let's get the the food.
Besides raw shellfish (I cannot underscore enough how much raw shellfish is in Brittany, the quantity borders on obscene), the food of Bretagne is tasty and stuffed to the brim with butter. Kouign amann is one such buttery pastry typical of this region of France. To make it you take pastry dough, and you layer it with butter and sugar and fold it a few times. Then you layer it with butter and sugar and fold it a few times. Then you repeat...fifty million times. When you bake it for a while the sugar caramelizes and creates a bit of a crust on the outside. The inside is sugary, doughy and super super buttery. It's like eating a bit of crispy caramel slathered with melting butter. Yes, that's drool you just dripped on to your computer. I know, me too. But wait, there's more. Perhaps some of you who have visited France have tasted the local delicacy known as the crepe? Well if you did it anywhere but Brittany, you were fooled! The homebase, the epicenter, if you will, of the crepe, is Bretagne. Galettes, the savory kind, are made with buckwheat flour and can contain cheese, egg, ham, spinach or shellfish, or just about any other combination of vegetable, meat or seafood you can imagine. They are creative; I think I saw a hawaiian galette on the menu last weekend. They eat the galettes with cider, not like Martinelli's either. This is hard cider, weaker than beer but stronger than water. It's absolutely fantastic. Many people enjoy a kir breton as an aperitif, which is cider (or champagne or white wine) with creme de cassis, or blackcurrant liquor. It's actually originally from Burgundy, but let's just pretend, shall we? Authentic breton all the way.
Well this is a lot more about Brittany than I was planning to write, but aren't you glad you know it now? No? Well too bad, it's my blog. Here are some pretty pictures from my trip:
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