My mom and I arrived in Paris on South Africa’s Women’s Day, but the flight had been pretty exhausting and Charles de Gaulle is not the most relaxing airport, so we weren’t feeling particularly Girl Power-y until we boarded our train to Rennes and watched the French country side rolling by in the silent comfort of our first class (because it was surprisingly affordable) SNCF seats. I think it was only at that point that my mom started to smile and accept that we were actually doing this and that our epic Breizh journey was underway.

The train ride from the airport to Rennes took about 2.5 hours and was a very pleasant way to decompress after our flight. We didn’t spend much time in Rennes, the ‘gateway to’ and capital of Brittany, and mostly used it as a stopover point at the beginning and end of our trip. Both times we stayed at hotels right across from the train station.

On the way up we stayed at the Ibis Styles Gare Nord as it was perfectly located between the train station and our car rental location. Having breakfast the next day helped a lot and overall it was the perfect first night stop-over.

Tired as we were we didn’t explore much of Rennes beyond the nearest grocery store, where we bought what would become some staples of our trip: baguette (of course) and heavenly vanilla yoghurt from La Fermière which comes in beautiful clay pots (which, obviously, came home with us in their droves).

If you’re a fan of bread, butter and soft cheeses then self-catering in France will make you very happy and even with our third world Rands we found basic food to be quite affordable.

There was a lot of construction happening at the Station while we were there so our view wasn’t exactly scenic, but we could hear the gentle (and oddly soothing) sounds of the SNCF lady from our room at night which was nice.

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BZH 2017: Intro  |  Pt 1  |  Pt 2  |  Pt 3  |  Pt 4  |  Paimpol 2017 – Festival du Chant de Marin 
Pt 5  |  Pt 6  |  Pt 7  |  Pt 8  |  Pt 9 |  Pt 10  | Pt 11  |  Pt 12  |  Saint-Malo: La Route du Rock Festival
Pt 13  |  Pt 14  |  Pt 15  |  pt 16  |  Pt 17  |  Pt 18

If you travel and you don’t use Booking.com you really should it’s the best! I’m not 100% sure how the referral codes work but try mine if you haven’t used one before for a discount after your first trip: https://www.booking.com/s/35_6/rattsi32