First Saturday in Bretagne

Although we will be living in Lannion, we are staying with our friend Christy in Perros-Guirec, a few kilometers away. Like many of the place names in Brittany, Perros-Guirec comes from the Breton language not French. Perros is a corruption of Pen Ros (head of the rock), and Guirec was the name of an evangelist saint (from Ireland or Wales) who is said to have landed at Pen Ros in a stone tub in the 7th century. Perros is on the coast, with a sheltered harbor that has been used for millennia. Perros was a sleepy fishing village in the mid-nineteenth century, when it was discovered by well-to-do French families as a great place for sea bathing and boating in the summer. Today, the population of Perros increases by a factor of 8 during the resort season. The town is full of stone villas with views of the bay and the sea and an idiosyncratic church with a dome and pyramidal spire (above left) , dedicated to St. Jacques le Majeur. On Monday, we will present ourselves to the town hall here (at right) and apply for our carte de séjour, which will allow us to remain in France for a year.

Because of the Gulf Stream, Brittany has a very mild climate, with plenty of rain. This allows palm trees to grow along with vegetation typical of the American South—azaleas, magnolias, rhododendrons, and camellias, to name four. Christy’s villa is called Les Azalées, for the azaleas in her yard (below).






Mostly we have been getting over jet lag and looking for an apartment to rent. We think that we have found one, but I will wait until we have signed the lease before describing it. I am struggling to express myself in French, something that comes more easily to Madeline. I make many mistakes, but plunge into conversation from time to time anyway, and usually can make myself understood. I surprise myself with the ease with which I can read French newspapers and magazines—the difficulty comes in transforming the words on the page into sounds in my mouth.


Yesterday we had lunch with Christy and Gérald at his Château, the Château de Kérivon, a fine stone mansion dating to about 1740 overlooking Lannion. Later, we took a short drive to Yaudet, where the Tréguer, the river that runs through Lannion, empties into the sea (below). There is a sheltered bay at this point, which attracted iron-age Celts and Roman settlers as well as Viking raiders. We followed a marked trail that took us past ruins ranging in date from the 1st century A.D. to a 19th century customs house. There is, of course, a church at Yaudet. We admired the outside, but by failing to view the interior, missed the “Virgin in bed,” a statue of Mary in an actual bed, the linens of which are changed each year in May. Ample reason to return.


Last night we took in a French movie, “OSS 117: Cairo, Nest of Spies.” This is a newly released espionage parody movie, based on a series of wildly popular French novels. Austin Powers with a French twist. No English subtitles, so I understood maybe one-third of the dialogue. Fortunately, it was played very broadly for laughs, and I had no trouble following the (quite silly) plot. The hero finds himself in 1955 Cairo, where he has to foil a plot by an Islamicist sect (the Eagles of Cheops) to overthrow Nasser and seize the Suez Canal. The filmmakers expertly parody the graphic style of the titles and the music of 1960s James Bond movies. I noticed two homages à Hitchcock: scenes recalling the one in “North by Northwest” where a man is knifed at the UN and falls into Cary Grant’s arms and the fireworks scene from “To Catch a Thief.”

Today we are chez Christy, reading and web surfing on a day of steady light rain.