Brittany & Normandy

An August 2010 trip to Normandy by wasa girl

From the Window Photo - Dinan (Ancient Riverfront City), Brittany, France

Quote: After several days in Paris is was time to see the French countryside, drink lots of cider and pay respects at the D-day beaches.

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Dinan (Ancient Riverfront City)

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Attraction | "Hours Drinking Cider"

Quote:

Honestly I had no idea what to expect, much of our trip plan was to go with the flow, so I had not even looked into what was around to do other than reading one page in an "all of France" travel guide. It was incredible, given the chance I would spend another two or three day in the town, maybe use it as my vacation get-away if I lived in Europe.

We took the train into the town, most tourists it seems drove in. The tourist office actually did not have a train schedule available. The train is easy but there are not many trains so you have to really plan your timing out to get to the town or to leave, however it would have been nice to have a car for one of the days so that we could see some of the other towns.

We had a great stay but I cannot stress enough that planning is important - we arrived on a Wednesday mid-day and left on Friday morning. Looking back this is what we would have done. I still would have taken the afternoon train arriving in Dinan from Paris and spent the afternoon wandering around the narrow streets of the town. The lower meal prices were a nice break after Paris and there were plenty of shops and cafes to fill the remainder of the day.

On Thursday get up and head straight to the open air market, there was everything you could want. Fresh, local cheeses, fruits and meats along with cider and wine. There are also vendors with inexpensive clothes and other items, but the food selection was beautiful, I wanted to buy a little of everything. We did buy some cheese, cured meat and hard cider before getting a loaf of bread from one of the shops in town. We took our lunch and walked along the city wall, stopping to eat overlooking the valley and river. From here given the option I would walk down to the lower part of the city and rent a boat for the afternoon. We did not adventure to this area of the town until the following day and we waited to long and were unable to rent a boat.

After the boat ride I would take the walking tour of the city offered by the tourist office. We did do this, they had the last English tour of the season in the evening. It was about five euros and the guide was friendly and had a lot of information to share. We saw any areas of the city that we had not seen earlier in the day and when we were done with the tour found a shop to stop and eat crepes at for dinner.

We spent one more day in Dinan, but I would have gotten up early and taken either the train or one of the bus tours to Mont Saint-Michel. We missed the train and were unable to make the trip out and back. It would have been a whole day long trip out and back, however we had done just about everything there was to do in Dinan, and the hotels are a lot more expensive near Mont Saint-Michel. We could have stopped on our way out of Dinan to the D-Day beaches the next day, but could not find any information on places to leave our bags if we went to Mont Saint-Michel.

Instead we found cafes to drink cider at, wandered through the lower level of the city and checked out the shops again. All what a vacation is about so it was wonderful. Read Less

Member Rating 4 out of 5 on March 15, 2011

Dinan (Ancient Riverfront City)
South From Saint Malo
Brittany, France