We thoroughly enjoyed the Saturday market in Rennes earlier this week called the “Marché des Lices” which has been a staple of life in old town Rennes every Saturday morning for the past 400+ years (read about the anniversary celebration here). The market takes place on the streets and goes on for several blocks, and also another courtyard and two buildings. There are hundreds of vendors selling fruits, veggies, meats, fish, bread, flowers, and more, and dozens of food trucks!
We met a vendor working his last day before retirement. He started the company 35 years ago making nougats with nuts using local honey, and then sold it for his retirement. He was so happy! We met another vendor selling “Breton cakes,” dense cakes with thick layers of chewy caramel in the middle (this one had it on the bottom too) and promptly fell in love with this dessert too.
We also visited the Rennes Museum of Fine Arts (“Musée des Beaux-Arts de Rennes”), which was free, and paid to see the current guest exhibition as well. The tickets were just €5 each. Museums in Europe are typically very inexpensive or free as Europeans are of the belief that art is for everyone to enjoy. We’ve been to many museums in our travels and there are often school field trips and even preschool groups learning about art in the museums.
Monday, we headed back to Angers just in time to enjoy another heat wave, this one short at least. It gave us time to slow down to talk and make some decisions. We’ve decided after our explorations of many lovely towns across northwestern France, Angers is the place we are going to settle in and stay a while. We both really enjoy this city, its vibe, and its people. The hard part now is where to live as, after leaving Washington nearly three months ago and spending two of them in France, we are weary of living out of suitcases in hotels and Airbnbs. We’ve spent a good part of this week exploring towns, riding trams and buses, and meeting up with new friends around Angers. Fingers crossed that we’ll find a place soon to settle down and start living our French life and see how it feels.
Tonight, we’re meeting up with new friends from Salem, Oregon who’ve been here for a few years. We are going to see a movie that was an independent film award winner in 2024 called “Sasquatch Sunset,” in English, with French subtitles. It will be our first movie theater movie since COVID! Who knew we’d have to go half way around the world to catch a movie post-pandemic? And that it would be a reminder of home in the Pacific Northwest?!?!