After visiting the Saturday morning market in the church square in Saint-Brieuc we headed to Paimpol for the music, dancing and boats of the Festival du chant de Marin.

  

Our Airbnb room was conveniently located a short walk (but on a steep slope) from the market so we made a quick outing there to check it out. The fresh produce all looked amazing, especially the vegetables, but for the most part it was a pretty depressing market selling mostly crappy Chinese-made clothing and toys so that was disappointing. We also got almost-hustled by a dude with some chinchillas. I didn’t know this was a thing but apparently it is – he hurled a lot of verbal abuse at us when we refused to buy any of his crap in exchange for playing with the chinchillas which he had foisted on our shoulders. Anyway the chinchillas were really cute so whatever.

  

  

  

  

    

We got a bit lost twice on the way to Paimpol. Google Maps had been consistently dodgy so at the suggestion of our Airbnb hosts we tried out Waze and had a lot more success with it (though both GPS systems had moments of complete failure along our trip).

  

After a series of confusing road detours and a multitude of signs to different parking areas upon entering Paimpol, we made our way towards the port and our nearby Airbnb. It didn’t have its own parking so we had to find somewhere on the street. I must say I really appreciate how the French (or maybe it’s just the Bretons?) seem to take advantage of big events (we saw this later in our trip too) to throw parking caution to the wind – the cars were just parked anywhere. We even parked right under a stop sign on the pavement…because everyone else was doing similar things. Side note : one of the initially confusing things about parking in France was that they don’t seem to mind which way you’re facing. Back home you have to face/park on the side of the road that you’re driving on, so the freedom to just park wherever and however was pretty trippy.

Anyway, our arrival in Paimpol was perfect – I got a bit flustered with all the cars everywhere and took the first ‘bay’ I found, right in front of the church, whose bells started ringing as we opened the car doors (we’d arrived perfectly at 2pm) and then a procession of costumed Bretons (complete with Bigouden headdresses) made their way past us. And when I got my bearings I realised we were one building away from the complex where we’d be staying.

After checking in we made our way through the cobblestreets of the old town to the port and the Festival.

  

  

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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