So yesterday was my dear friend Newton Taluskie’s birthday and we decided to celebrate the occasion with a day trip to the city of Rennes (pronounced *throat clear*-enne). Rennes is a little Northwest of me and bigger than Angers. I actually applied to study there as well and after seeing it would have been quite content there as well. Rennes was lovely. We took a train out there arriving around 2 in the afternoon and set off to find some lunch. At first, ever place we went to had stopped serving lunch at 2 and we were beginning to get quite distressed when we stumbled upon this lovely restaurant the name of which I can’t remember for the life of me and they agreed to serve us! Hooray! As it turns out, all those places that were closed had nothing on this place. It was a fantastic lunch. We mentioned that it was Newton’s birthday and the adorable owner man brought us free champagne! So nice! Newton nearly peed himself with excitement. We started with a charcuterie plate with assorted meats, terrines and pâte. I’ve learned not to consider what I’m eating at all and just do it which has been an incredibly useful strategy. The pâte, God knows what was in it, was so delicious. It was salty and flavorful and so tasty on the French bread toast they gave us. There was some salami and a terrine of what might have been rabbit? Who knows, it was quite good, though. The only thing I didn’t try was this gray spiral-y meat which was just too hard to imagine as anything other than entrails. For my main course I got the Plat du Jour which was a whitefish filet under a creamy sauce of something yummy paired with sensational mashed potatoes (if you don’t already know how I feel about mashed potatoes, I feel REALLY. Really good about them.) and a greens salad with the house made wine vinaigrette dressing. Yummy yummy yummy I’ve got love in my tummy. Such a great meal. I had to really consciously pace myself. After all this I had the dessert du jour which was called “Ile Flottante” (I think that’s spelled right…Dad?) which was this delicious meringue like you would find on a lemon meringue pie with toasted almonds on top and it sat in pool of vanilla cream sauce kind of like a thinner version of vanilla pudding. It was so heavenly and light. I could eat that every day. We merci beaucoup-ed like madmen and wandered off to explore downtown. Rennes has almost more character than Angers because all the buildings are different and most restaurants seemed to have brightly painted. We wandered around and went briefly to the Musée de Beaux Arts (customary in every French city). Dad—I saw some lovely Caillebottes!
Oh so my camera died within 5 minutes of being in Rennes so you can just imagine these things. Maybe I’ll try to steal some of Newton’s pictures.
After that we had a couple hours before our train and so we spent them loitering in this cute little coffee shop/bar. Coffee here really is so wonderful. I know I’ve said it before. But really, so delicious. Newton successfully drank throughout his birthday-day and after an annoyingly long trip home we all went out to an exchange student bonfire. Sitting in the woods around a fire having sing-a-longs—that’s something I can always get behind.
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