The Road Goes Ever On

Friday, August 7, 2015

Rennes Tall Half-Timber

After almost two months in Normandy and Brittany, I thought I'd seen everything in the half-timbered realm. Rennes has plenty, as much as Dinant, more than Caen and rivals Rouen. But at Rennes they built big, high, four, five, six stories, higher than any other place we've seen. I'll just post a few of the better ones (including a few standard three-four stories). All of them are centuries old, but, presumably, restored, um, stabilized, and modernized. In most cases. Presumably.

Rennes Market

The food market was the big attraction for us, reminiscent of the markets we frequented in Paris last summer. This one was indeed large, and strictly food, ingredients and some already prepared.

The market opens at 8:30, and we were among the first there, the
sun still low in the sky

Dozens of these giant skillets going

"First you slice up about two dozen carrots..."

One of several rotisserie trucks

I am so looking forward to getting back to Costco,
where you can get twice the chicken for half the
price, wonderfully spiced and cooked just right

Inside one of the two large market halls

Breton pizza

Food of Satan; takes many shapes and forms

One of many seafood stands

I'll post a video of the lobsters next door trying to escape

29 flavors of yogurt; mix and match

It was August 1st, and many of the market hall shops were already
into the fermeture

Not the coffee babe

Waiting to see your preferred butcher

More food trucks

After doing our city walk, we are back around lunch-time to do
some actual shopping

After the fruits and legumes, we visited the Indian food counter
to get some naan for a subsequent dinner; there's our naan,
being cooked

And, of course, the rotisserie truck, for half a chicken and some
potatoes

Great market

And a little repas back at the camper

Rennes Scenes

Rennes is the capital of Brittany, a very old city, now a high tech center, and France's 10th largest city. The chief draws for us were its Saturday market--reputedly France's 2nd largest--and its traditional and historic architecture. Yes, half-timbered. Tall half-timbered, as we'll see in a subsequent post. But first some other sights about town. Oh, we stayed in a free aire adjacent to the municipal campground and took the bus. Actually, we stayed two nights in Rennes, but that's another story.

You get off the bus right in the heart of the city and think you
are in a flower market or at least an outdoor garden store; but no,
it's just the open public mall with hundreds (thousands) of
flowering plants in pots on these stands, going on for blocks

After the market (next post) we went to the
Rennes cathedral; these Romanesque towers
are all that remain of the two previous
cathedrals on this site since the Middle Ages;
these great buildings don't always stand the
test of time, and in particular, a part of the
first Romanesque building collapsed in
perhaps the 12th or 13th century; a Gothic
building followed but it began throwing stones
in the 17th, and so was taken down

What then was built, and which stands today, is a sort of
Baroque neo-classical; not very French-looking, but interesting

Elaborate chandeliers throughout; a very dark place, as one might
imagine

Central dome/tower/oculus

Pantokrator, sort of

Dying, no, Dead Gaul

Pretty organ

Our next church--I failed to get its name--has
been turned into the TI and city history display;
the building actually slopes downhill and features
this outdoor holy water thing

Barrel vaulting inside

Many interesting historic displays; note slope

And historical photographs; this is a line of mounted soldiers
guarding the building where the second Dreyfuss trial was going
on, in Rennes; tough times in France...gross maldistribution of
wealth, emerging socialism vs nationalism, toss in a dose
of racism...sound familiar?