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Showing posts with label Ile-aux-Moines. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Ile-aux-Moines. Show all posts

Tuesday, October 9, 2018

Visiting Ile-aux-Moines (Brittany, France) with Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Visiting Ile-aux-Moines (Brittany, France) with Savvy Mom Ruth Paget


One of our friends in Paris had a family home on the Ile-aux-Moines (Monks’ Island) off the coast of Vannes in Brittany, France.

On a crisp, fall day, my husband Laurent, toddler Florence, and I set out for Vannes to pretend to be banished fishermen on the Ile-aux-Moines.

No cars are allowed on the island, so we trudged all of Florence’s toddler equipment (tricycle, helmet, multiple changes of clothing, sippy cups and so on) onto the island by making several ferryboat trips back and forth in the rain.  (It rains all the time in Brittany in the winter.)

Our friend’s family had a medieval era stone house on the island that was very chilly in the rain.  (Homes in Brittany all have very pointy roofs to let rain fly off roofs quickly and far away from homes.)

I told our friend that she needed tapestries from Aubusson to hold in heat.

“It’s never warm in here. Tapestries would hold in the cold,” she said.

Florence wore layers of little T-shirts and American sweatsuits that my University of Chicago roommate wisely bought for her when I came to show off “bébé Florence” to the good-looking Greeks in Chicago.

We forgot our chills when our friend came back with spiny lobsters for each of us.

She made a bowl of homemade mayonnaise to spread on baguette toast to go with the lobster meat.  We drank a Bourgogne Aligoté white wine with this ruddy meal.

We ignored the sheets of rain thudding on the roof and listened to rock music.  I taught Florence how to dance to the rhythm of the Rolling Stones, U2 and BB King, and Rai music from France.

We visited Ile-aux-Moines several times and even went to a wedding there.  Laurent filmed the wedding that had lots of strolling musicians playing bagpipes and harps and little girls twirling pixie baskets full of flowers.


By Ruth Paget, author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France

Click here for:  Ruth Paget's Amazon Books




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