Leaving France

On Saturday we bid a sad farewell to Les Essarts and hit the road for one last day in France. After dropping Marianne and Nanny at the Rennes airport, we headed south and west towards the Foret de Paimpont, said to be the last stand of forest of a type that used to cover all of Brittany. It was also a place of Arthurian legend and said to be Merlin's home, as well as the site of his grave.

Maybe Vermont has spoiled us, because we were not impressed by the forest -- most of which appeared to be a managed logging site. Nor were we particularly impressed by Merlin's grave....I guess he was a druid, after all. We should have been expecting the minimalist approach.

In any event, after a brief walk we headed south to La Roche Bernard where we had a reservation at the Auberge Brettone. Beautiful room in a charming town.


Sunday we headed back to Rennes to drop off the car the the train station. After futile attempts to find gas, we did just that. Indeed, getting fuel was one of the harder ordeals in France. Our credit cards wouldn't work (maybe the machines were expecting two factor authentication?) and so you had to find a station with a human who could process cash. On a holiday weekend, that was easier said than done.

In any event, the train ride was much more relaxing than driving back into Paris and before long we were wheeling our luggage from the train right on into the Sheraton. Then, the next morning, we wheeled our luggage from the Sheraton right into the airport -- really convenient. Checked in early, cleared security quickly, shopped for some chocolate and then were relaxing in the Continental lounge. We should have known it was too good to be true. Not fifteen minutes in, uniformed guards came in an announced that we had to evacuate the lounge. Bewildered, we went back into the terminal to see all the shops closing up. Long story short, someone left a bag unattended, triggering the eventual evacuation of the entire terminal. We were herded into a room with about 1,000 of our closest friends to reclear security....via one machine. Took 3.5 hours. Ouch.