Hi, folks,

I got home Saturday night and am still somewhat out of whack timewise -- and therefore not thinking very straight-- so for now I'll just throw out some random highlights, thoughts and suggestions, and if they're of any interest to anyone out there, great!

(This is my first trip to report since getting tuned in and turned on to Fodors a few months ago, so it's kind of like I've been sitting in class watching everyone else give his report and now it's my turn to go up to the blackboard.)

1) American Airlines the whole trip was great. We had a good deal via Priceline ($369 + tax RT LAX-Paris). We went out via JFK and back via ORD. Planes were crowded but everything went smoothly and folks were nice. Last leg, though, fr/ Chicago-LA, was a packed 737, and sitting in the middle seat there was no pique-nique, I wannatellya.

2) We spent one night in Paris (again via Priceline) in Pigalle, at Hotel Libertel Amiral Duperre, a short block from Place Pigalle. Again, we had a good rate (sixty-something dollars, I forget exactly), but I was a little nervous after reading some comments on Biddingfortravel.com. For our purposes, though, it was more than OK. The room was small, so it wouldn't have done for a week, if for the location as well as the room, but it was convenient for the afternoon in Montmartre. Even schlepping all the way across town the next morning to Gare Montparnasse took only 20-25 minutes via Metro. The hotel was clean and the people were friendly.

--Note as long as I'm thinking about it-- Not once in fifteen days in France did a single soul show the slightest hostility towards us because we were Americans. I didn't bring up politics and neither did anyone else. I'm excluding here the two thugs --or rather, I'll give them the benefit of the doubt and call them borderline delinquent young hooligans-- who harrassed me on the street for an hour one morning --"mugged" is a BIT too strong a word-- and stole my bag of croissants. This, by the way, wasn't in Paris. It happened in quaint Dinan, Brittany. More later...

3) Our train trip from Paris to Dinan, and back to Paris a week later, went smoothly. We had bought our tickets on SNCF's website a couple of months before, and it was quick work to pop into Gare du Nord and get hard-copies. For some reason the machine wouldn't let us do it that way but a short visit to a window took care of things.

4) In Dinan we had rented a gite through Frenchconnections.co.uk. It was a several-hundred-year-old converted stable and PERFECT. Right across the street from the Val Cocheral gardens, just outside the old city walls, friendly English on-site owners. I'll warn and apologize experienced Brittany travelers right now that except for one day trip to Mont-St-Michel (could just as well have gone to Disneyland) we didn't leave Dinan. I KNOW that there was lots of interesting stuff in the area to see, but the whole point of this half of our trip was to go somewhere outside Paris and just SIT. Dinan was perfect for that.

It was quaint and charming and picturesque but just big and bustling enough to keep us occupied and interested for the week. Six days out of seven were chilly and rainy (If I had a Euro for every local who told us, "You should have been here in April!&quot, but that not only didn't bother us, it seemed almost fitting for the region. Take a little umbrella is my sage advice. What else can you do?

5) We were budget diners for our entire trip, but standout restaurant suggestions in Dinan are the Creperie d'Armor, right in the middle of the old city (above average food but inexpensive all day, not just at lunch), and a teensy family-run place called Ti Youann, where they had an enormous all-galettes-and-crepes lunch for 10 Euros.

One day for lunch --and I'd recommend this highly-- we bought sandwiches and cider and walked down to the port and sat on the quayside with our legs hanging over the edge and had a picnic.

Market day in Dinan is Thursday and a lot of fun. I bought a chicken from a cute little woman with a bowler hat perched atop her hair. Even if you don't plan to cook anything, the market is a hoot, and there's plenty of prepared food to gobble as well.

6) The Event: I've stewed over whether to include this little brush-with-the-underworld in my report, because I don't want to scare anyone away from this really neat town. The more I've thought about it, though, I've convinced myself that my experience was TRULY an aberration, and I managed to find the ONLY two unpleasant people in town, and so I decided it was worth relating.

On Sunday morning after our Saturday arrival in Dinan, still just a day and a half off the plane, I was up very early and went strolling --about 6am-- in search of a boulangerie that might be open. Just inside the old town, along the Place Duguesclin, a car pulled up and two young men started calling out to me. My French is OK but I didn't get what they were saying, and being a big-city fellow with caution-lights always going off in my head I didn't want to engage them in the half-light of the morning anyway, I shrugged and said only, "Sorry."
"Oh, you are English!"
They then produced some vulgarities that I'll only characterize --this being the family forum it is-- as sexually aggressive. I'm a 41-year-old man with an average build, and I can honestly say that neither my physical appearance nor my attire could in any way be read as provocative. Being unable to get into the subtleties of the language, I couldn't tell whether these two were looking for some sleazy sexual highjinks and they thought I was hip to it, or if they were looking for a good target for a ripoff, or if they just saw an opportunity to have some of their idea of fun by terrorizing me. In hindsight I'm inclined towards the latter scenario, but I'm still not sure, and in any case what happened was awfully scary and kept me awake a few nights...

The car drove off, I found a boulangerie open, bought a few things, and headed home, via another route than I'd originally taken but still on a main street. Sure enough, the car reappeared and the shouting started up again. I tried to smile and play dumb, and I kept walking, but they didn't let up. They turned around and slowly followed along, and when I turned the last corner before returning home they disappeared. Next, though, the passenger appeared beside me, now aboard a scooter, and recommenced his harangue. I decided not to turn into my driveway --just in case this turned messy-- and thereby let him know where I was staying, so I continued to walk, but by now I was pretty annoyed and I tried shouting, "No!" "Allez!" but it didn't make any difference. The car then came back, and the driver got out and walked up behind me, the scooter-guy still carrying on to my side. There was a high wall to my other side, so it was here that I really for a moment thought what a pain it would be for my friend, sleeping soundly back in the gite, to have to get my body to the United States. The guy on foot snatched the bag of croissants from my hand (they had looked like REALLY good croissants, too) and the two both took off.

There was a phone booth nearby so I called the police. The man who answered spoke no English but I was able to impart what had happened. I had the car's license number, which I gave him along with my name and address, but he didn't know what I wanted him to do. He asked if I wanted my croissants back and I said not really but that that wasn't the point. That was pretty much the end of it.

I've gone back and forth in my mind between feeling like --as I said before-- this was truly a on-in-a-million experience and boy, it's going to make a funny story when I tell about the Great Croissant Robbery of 2003, and on the other hand that I was truly violated. I'm doing my best to stick with Option 1.

Coming up in our next installment:
Paris!

Clayrr - just please don't squeak the chalk as you write. : - ) Seriously, I am enjoying your report.

Did the machine in the train station ask for your Credit card? If it did, then maybe that's the reason why you had to go to the window instead of using the machine - because the machine will only recognize French credit cards (I have been told these have a special chip embedded in them.)

I'm sorry to hear of your unpleasant experience re the young men in the car. As you are male your experience of this type of behaviour is likely limited, so may I offer this advice for next time: Do not smile or attempt to appease your aggressors, this will not help and usually only encourages further pursuit. I have had some success dealing with this sort of thing by calmly noting down the license plate of the car in question, and making sure that the occupants see me doing it. Don't think that your reporting your case to the police is futile - the point is to introduce yourself to the police as one who does not take bullies lightly. Don't feel silly about their only taking a bag of croissants: this episode was not about the croissants; you know it, they know it, and the police know it, too. (The police likely have a good idea of who harassed you. While they can't formally do anything, they doubtless have their ways of letting this crowd know that the "Englishman in hotel X" is off-limits as amusement material.)

Clay, what a truly scary incident! Good for you for calling the police. I trust you didn't see them again for the remainder of your visit.

I agree with your philosophy about renting a gite close to town and staying put. One of the joys of staying in a French town (or European one, for that matter) is not having to drive everywhere! I have a friend who stayed in Dinan with her family and loved it.

Clayrr

Very interesting report. Sorry to hear of your bad experience with the two hoods. I think you handled it well. I have been to Dinan a couple of times and agree it is a relaxing cool place. Next time chill out for the afternoon and take a boat ride up the Rance to the sea port of St Malo. Great day out. Look forward to reading part two.

Gentle Readers,

When last we were together, I was still in charming Dinan, Brittany, enjoying the quiet half of a French 2-weeker. It was a sit-still week except for a day-trip to Mont-St-Michel, and that's where our story picks up...

1) There are bus trips available to the Mont from Dinan, and whether you go with a private company, which is direct, or on public transport, which involves a change in St. Malo, it runs about 35 Euros. The budgeteers we are, we chose the train, which is only about 14. The only downside to this method is that it means you must change trains --and sit for an hour plus-- in Dol, a village to which we have assigned the too-easy nickname of Dull, France.

--Side story-- While inquiring at the Dinan tourist offices about travel options to the Mont, we overheard an English couple asking about how to get to Disneyland. They, like many English in Brittany, had come over either from or via the Channel Islands rather than through Paris. The local tourist girl had no info on the trains, so I suggested to the English woman that she could easily check train schedules on line (and told her where a convenient cybercafe was) if she didn't want to go the to Gare. A little later, when we ourselves were at the station looking up schedules to the Mont, the English were in front of us at the ticket desk. Boy, was I glad this lady wasn't American! She sat down and said. "Do you speak English?"
"Pas du tout," the ticket-man shook his head.
"OK. We want to go to Disneyland. How much is that?"
"Madame, no English."
"OK. Combien to Disneyland?"
"Madame." He looked around the room in what I thought was an exceptionally patient plea for sympathy.
I interjected that fares could vary wildly depending on what day she'd be traveling, whether she bought tix at the desk or online, how many people, etc. She ignored all this.
"I just want a rough idea," pointing to his computer keyboard as if to imbue it with her own language skills.
Shrugging, the ticket man asked, "How ma-ny?"
"Two adults and one child."
"Madame?"
"OK. We are DEUX adults and UNE child." (Increasing volume always helps with language differences.)
The man gave her a number and she seemed happy. She clearly wasn't a Fodorite.

But I digress. I had already read that Pontorson was the nearest train station to Mont-St-Michel, and that is indeed the case. Where I made my mistake was in assuming that the Mont was therefore within walking distance from Pontorson. We set off from Pontorson (a pretty little town with a M-St-M chip on its shoulder, if you ask me), but began to suspect we were in trouble when, about a half mile from town, the sidewalks ended and we were hiking in the weedy shoulder of the road. We KNEW we were in trouble when, about a half hour into our hike there was still no Mont on the horizon. Lots of clean, attractive buses marked "Brittany Transports" (in French, duh!) passed us as we trugged through the weeds. The coup de grace came at the sign that said (a little too cheerfully, if you ask me), "Mont-St-Michel 10km." Eeeeew.
Buses from Pontorson to the Mont run about every 15-30 minutes all day and cost 1.70 Euros each way. End of sermon.

2) The Mont was startling in its mass of tourists. I'd hate to imagine what it's like on a midsummer Saturday. As a fairly-well-read professional chef I felt an obligation to eat a Poularde omelette, even though I knew she was dead as a handmade doornail. I decided against, though, and after looking at all the Mont's menus we opted instead for the set-price lunch at Restaurant du Chapeau Rouge. It was a great value (13 Euros-ish), and everything was superb. Friend had Ham in Port, I had mussels, then Fish in Cream with mussels. Drank a great 10-Euro Muscadet as well.
While cafe-sitting after lunch I pulled out my copy of Elizabeth David's French Provincial Cooking (I'm strange that way) and looked up the passage about Mere Poularde's omelettes. In fact, even forty years ago, when ED wrote her book, there was considerable dispute over which restaurant on the Mont could lay the truest claim to Mere's legacy, so I didn't feel so bad about not having one of the bastard omelettes.
We visited the Abbey, which I guess you're supposed to do.
I'm glad we went to the Mont, but now I've done it and don't think I'll need to do it again.
We took the bus back to Pontorson.

Next installment, for sure: Paris.

Suexx:
Yes, the SNCF machine did in fact ask for the credit card, which it couldn't read. The ticket-man's machine was more literate, though, and we were in and out tout de suite.

Side bit of advice to SNCF novices: When you stamp your ticket at one of the little orange boxes in the stations, be sure to stamp BOTH pages of the ticket if it's a two-parter. I got a stern-with-a-smile lecture from a TGV conductor about not doing this.

keep it coming...I'm enjoying your writing style...!

I love it!! The Great Croissant Robbery of 2003....I love your trip report....

Thanks, Travelnut.

We left off at the end of a mostly-peaceful week in Dinan, where the cafe-sitting on Place Duclos was first rate, as was the Belgian beer. You'll see Affligem and Leffe most often.

Beer Hint: While you may be in France, you're entirely safe in skipping French beer. The only one we tried (it was Alsatian) tasted of, so help me, mussels, and I wasn't anywhere near a bowl of mussels at the time.

An easy train trip back to Paris (Stamp Those Tickets!), with changes in Dol (enough said about THAT!) and Rennes to the TGV brought us to Gare Montparnasse without delay or incident.

Our Paris abode was a swell apartment we found through DrawbridgetoEurope.com. (Unit #916, on Rue du Renard, if anyone's interested in looking at it and picturing me sitting in the living room, making notes with which to produce my gripping Fodor's Trip Report. If you do go for a look, make note of the sloped ceiling over the loft bedroom, on the right side of which I cracked my head open when I rose our last morning in Paris.) What a find it was! The pictures on the website didn't do it justice. The location just couldn't have been better: diagonally across from Hotel de Ville, 5 or 6 doors north of Rue du Rivoli, which meant that it was a quick little walk to the islands, truly a hop throughout Beaubourg and the Marais, quick business reaching the Louvre, and even a doable stroll to the Opera and, therefore, to the big department stores.

Speaking of department stores: Galeries Lafayette and Printemps, both on Blvd haussmann right behind the Opera, give foreigners a 10% discount on most purchases, plus they do the 12% VAT refund if you spend 175 Euros in one day in that store. Le Bon Marche, down in the 7th, does the tax refund but offers no discount. If you know what you want to buy --we did: Swatches, which we buy in every vacation city we visit, and sneakers-- it makes sense to plan a little and do it all in one place. The just-below-the-rooftop cafeteria in Galeries Lafayette, by the way, was great. There was a huge variety of dishes, with a pasta station, a salad bar, a grill, etc., and I'll admit to a bit of childlike glee at seeing my big soda-glass of red wine squirt out of the dispenser, where you hold your glass under the spout and push back.
AND, as long as we're in Galeries Lafayette, run-don't-walk to the food hall and wish if for no other reason that you lived in Paris so you could eat every meal and do all your grocery shopping from there. We had a takeout spread of their Asian dumplings one night.

So I've read a zillion views on which part of the city is the best, but for our Euros, our little corner of the Beaubourg was it!

I, being a planner by nature, had read all the books and spent hours on Fodor's looking for the absolute-tippy-toes best way to spend my time in Paris. I mapped out a rough schedule, leaving what I thought was ample time to do cultural stuff, stroll, whatever we wanted. I wanted to be read-up on the city BEFORE we went so I wouldn't have to spend my week there with my nose in a book. My planning all flew out the fenetre about two hours after we arrived. The cafe-sitting was just SO great that we ended up scrapping the Orsay, the Picasso Museum, almost everything except the quickie-Louvre-run, the Eiffel Tower, a 1/2 day to Versailles. We piqueniqued one day on the western point of Ile de la Cite, near some teenagers who were apparently cutting school (or maybe the teachers or janitors or bus drivers were on strike) and playing guitars and dancing, which was very charming.

Newbie Hint: Study and Plan as much as you want, carry a metro map in your pocket, and then just roll with what you feel. Would it have been nice to see the Orsay? Sure, but I used to live in Chicago, where the Art Institute has an equal collection of Impressionism. There's lots of hindsighting that I could do here, but I only know that I thoroughly enjoyed my Paris week. I'm not even embarrassed to say that we had lunch one day at the Chicago Pizza Pie Factory, just off the Champs Elysees. What a kick that was!

Other Stuff In No Particular Order:

Versailles: The RER train trip was a breeze from Chatelet-Les Halles station. They make it very easy, and you just look at the multilingual sign that says "If you want to go to..." "take the train marked..."
The trains all have names that make them sound like furniture at IKEA. For instance, I think that our options to Versailles Rive Gauche were to take the "Vick" or "Vego" trains. Later, when we left town (blood seeping through my ball cap from the, er, domestic accident) and were headed to the airport, we got on an "Ilgo" or "Elsa" or "Pika" or "Chat" train or something like that. (Or maybe that's my IKEA dining set) I've seen lots of postings hereabouts from people who are nervous about using the Metro, but if you just take your time and look at the signs, it really is manageable.

All for now. Stay tuned for more odds 'n' ends real soon.

clayrr, not only is your report gripping, it's one of the most entertaining I've read in a long time! Thanks for taking the time and effort to do it.

More random this-and-thats from last week in Paris:

Followup to last installment's Versailles trip: It's a great place for home decorating tips. If any of you ever come to my downtown Los Angeles loft, you'll see all the improvements!

Guilty confession re Versailles:
It's ornate and beautiful and all that, but --and maybe I'm just too jaded for my 41 years-- I wasn't wowed. Even the Hall of Mirrors; it was just sort of a "Yeah, nice." Great churches still get to me, but this...not really. Does anyb ody else feel this way about Versailles?
The REALLY neat part of the Versailles trip was our picnic on a rowboat on the canals out back. After walking through the regular-admission part of the palace, my friend wanted to see the King's Apartments but I really didn't, so I went into town and found a traiteur and a wine shop, and bought some sandwiches and celeri remoulade and a bottle of Champagne. (Total round trip, 30-40 minutes.) I had planned ahead, of all things, and brought two glasses in my backpack.
We strolled down to the canals and got our boat (11 Euros an hour plus 10 Euro refundable deposit) and went a-rowing. I hadn't considered that the hike back from town had jostled the Champagne somewhat, so as I was just beginning to uncork it, I had barely untwisted the wire once when the whole top blew off, startling me no little bit and sending a flock of ducks into quick flight. I felt bad about leaving my jetsam in such a regal body of water, and on the row back later towards the boat barn I looked for the cork, which I would happily have retrieved had I found it, but to no avail. It will have to wait for future anthropologists to find and ponder. It was a fine way to spend an hour, anyway.

Eiffel Tower advice: Go Early! We showed up at 10:30 one weekday morning and the lines were already out of control, so we came back the next morning at 8:30 or so and were then only about fifty people back from the front. The time passed quickly, and any chance of nodding off was reduced by the constant harangue of trinket-sellers. "One Euro!" "Half price!" One hint: I don't know if they always open the same banks of elevators, but last week they weren't all open. (I hope I remember the directions here correctly.) We noticed on our first visit that the West Pillar was closed (maybe just used for staff & supplies?), and all elevator traffic was sent up via the North (as you approach from the Trocadero/River, the first pillar on your left) and East (from the same direction, the second pillar on your left) pillars. The South pillar was used for walk-up traffic only. The next morning, though, the sign on the West pillar, which had been closed the day before, was lit up, with no indication it would be out of service, and a line began to form there as well as at the other two entrances. A little after nine a.m., however, the "Entrance Closed" sign came on, and the whole line scrambled over to the other two. It was a little confusing for some people, I guess.

Fine Dining Note: The 2.20 Euro doughnut ("dounought&quot at the snack bar on the Eiffel Tower isn't very good. As a culinary professional I'm obliged to check this kind of thing, and I'm normally a Francophile about all things food, but this one just can't begin to compare to that Holy Grail of Breakfast pastry, the chocolate-covered doughnut at the visitor center at the top of Trail Ridge Road in Rocky Mountain National Park, Colorado. Those were real good in 1978, anyway, and they clearly made an impression.

Fine Dining Note #2:
At Berthillon on Ile St-Louis, the rhubarbe (I think it's much cuter with the "e," don't you?) ice is excellent, and not something you see in the Ralph's.

Culinary Aside to serious cooks:
ANYTHING cooking-wise you see in Brittany that you want to take home, you can also buy in a Monoprix in Paris. Knowing this ahead of time would have spared me lugging a sack of buckwheat flour on my aching shoulder through three rail transfers. By the end of the trip I was wondering, Why couldn't I have been a stamp collector? I wouldn't have to carry jars and cans of stuff all over the world that way...

Restaurant tip:
Chez Omar (47 rue de Bretagne, 3rd) is swell. One of the guide books described it as a North African bistro, and it's more couscous dishes than anything else, but it was reasonable and good and crowded and fun. They don't take reservations, but even at 10pm on a Saturday, our group of four (careful readers will note that our traveling group of two has swelled... We got together with some Swedish friends who were in Paris when we were.) waited less than 15 minutes for a table ("une table," en francais).
We all ate like pigs, had dessert and after-dinner drinks and not-too-bad Algerian wine, and the check was around 115 Euros. The short wait might or might not have had something to do with the presence in our party of a comely blonde Swedish thing, over whom the bar and wait staff seemed to become all drooly.

Thanks for reading.

More as I think of it....

Hi Clay,

Great trip report.

I, also, thought that the gardens at Versaille were far superior to the palace.