Bretagne (Part III) Guirec & St. Malo

St. Malo

On day four we left Morlaix on D786 northeast to Lannion. Lannion reminded us very much of Quimper.  We had lunch on the town bridge, which one of the few bridges in Europe that are still occupied (the other famous one is in Prague). We had lunch at one of the restaurants on the bridge that looked cute, but it wasn’t great. Too often those restaurants in great locations unfortunately do not have great food. They don’t have to, tourists go to them because they are conveniently located. We prefer to search for our food!

After Lannion we headed over to Saint– and Perros Guirec. This is just a great coastline for exploring and unusual due to its coloring. Known as the “Côte de Granit Rose” (pink granite coast), it stretches for more than 30 kilometres from Plestin-les-Greves to Louannec and is one of the outstanding coastlines of Europe. This special pink rock is rare and can be found in only three other places in the world; Ontario, Canada, Corsica and China.

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Bretagne (Part II) – Morlaix & Roscoff

Central Morlaix

On our third day in Bretagne we headed further north close to the town of Morlaix, to a chateau called Chateau du Bois de la Roche, near Garlan and a few minutes outside of Morlaix.

On the way we first visited the coast taking D887 out of Port Launay to Camaret-sur-Mer. This is a rugged coastline with a lighthouse out on a point. There’s numerous trails to take and worth doing. If you drive right out to the point of Camaret there is parking and you’ll find the trail. Be careful with your footing in some of the areas!

After that we continued on E60 and on the way we turned off before Brest to visit Landerneau. We were close to Brest but decided to skip it. Its rather large town, much of it new as it was bombed quite a bit during WWII, so we decided on Landerneau instead. Landerneau is actually quite similar to Quimper. We enjoyed walking its old town streets, lined with well-preserved half-timbered buildings.

We continued on to the Chateau to get checked in and take a nap. The Chateau is owned by a German who bought the chateau with his wife some years before. Unfortunately shortly  the purchase of the chateau she died of cancer. He now rents out rooms, helped out by his son, while he takes care of the large property. Our room was on the third floor, shared with two other rooms. They were empty, which means the common sitting area and the shared bathroom, were all for us to use. This is something to be aware of when taking a room at a Chateau; do you get your own bathroom? If not, do you mind sharing? We prefer our own, but forgot to ask this time. Fortunately it worked out for us.

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Brittany or Bretagne (Part I)

Port Launay

We took this trip at the beginning of  June of 2012. We attended the wedding in St. Gildas (Bay of Morbihan) of Flo’s brother Tony to Christine, and then rented a car and headed north. We had a week to make a quick tour around peninsula of Finistere, to see what we liked and what we may want to come back to in the future. Flo’s sister has a newly built summer home in St. Gildas so we knew we’d be visiting this area regularly in the future.

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Some Vacation Photo Taking Tips

  1. Pack as light as possible. Do you really need to be packing the latest Nikon SLR with five lenses around with you? How good are your photos really going to be, or, how much better than a $300 camera that if you lose it or its stolen, its not a problem?
  2. Back up, Back up, Back up. Don’t delete the photos on your camera; that a back-up. Back-up every night to your computer, that’s a back-up. Be on iCloud so you can sync and have your photos also on your computer back home, and in the cloud.
  3. If you have an iPhone, try out the Aps HDR Pro and DMD. With regards to HDR Pro, it works best with about a 50/50 distribution of light, meaning 50% is overexposed and 50% is under exposed. Works best with clouds in the sky, not blue skies. And the bigger, darker the clouds the better. Works well when you have water in front of you to bounce reflections off of, the effect you get in places like Venice. Or on lakes in the later part of the day. They are amazing. Here’s some samples of what they can do.[slideshow]
  4. Avoid shooting photos during mid-day. The best light is in the morning and at sun-down (the golden hour). Don’t shoot into the sun, unless you really know what you are doing. 
  5. Use the flash to fill in light, especially to get rid of shadows on people’s faces. When shooting people in scenes, I’ll just leave the flash on.

Tuscany One-Week Tour

Piazza (Plaza) della Signora, Florence, Tuscany

In October of 2011 we visited Tuscany, first flying into Vienna for a few days and then taking the train over to Florence. We stayed in Florence for a couple of nights, then rented a car and drove down to Sienna on Highway SR222. This a beautiful drive with a number of places worth visiting along the way. From Siena we did side trip visits to Monteriggioni, Colle di Val d’Elsa, San Gimignano and Volterra. After a couple of days in Siena we drove down to Montepulciano, staying at a chateau just outside of the town, called Dionora. From here we visited Montepulciano, Pienza, San Quirico and Montalcino. A week was just about right, with three days in Florence, two days in Siena and two days near Montepulciano, to become quite familiar with Tuscany and discover which places we like best to come back for a longer visit. Here’s some of the things we recommend.

 

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