Tuesday May 10, 2016 is sunny but cool. The forecast is for rain so we planned to wear our raincoats for our trip to Christine’s house for tutoring.
Today is a 10AM French lesson day. There were no problems waiting for the bus, but after leaving the train station/gare the driver didn’t make the usual turn. There was a deviation or detour. The deviation caused the route to be changed. We skipped at least three planned stops on the normal route. Even though it was a different route we arrived at our destination on time. There weren’t any signs indicating the route changes, so too bad if your stop was one of the routes that were skipped.
After lunch and homework we took a walk out of the Intra-Muros to the Sillon Beach. We walked around the basin Vauban. The horizon looked hazy, but by the time we walked back towards the harbor we could tell a fog was “rolling in”. The Corsaire Ferry from Dinard arrived through the fog.
Corsaire Ferry approaching through the fog
We sat at the harbor for about 20 minutes as the fog got thicker. The Brittany Ferry which was docked on the other side of the harbor slowly disappeared in the fog.
Brittany Ferry in the fog
We did find a couple of interesting license plates in the parking lot. There was an E license plate for Espagne (Spain).
Espagne (Spain) plate
There was another license plate we could not immediately identify. After a little research, it turned out to be an old style license plate from Belgium.
Thursday April 28 is a day with some question marks. A transportation strike (la grève in French) is scheduled for today and we do have to travel a bit. How we will be affected is the question?
Thursday April 28th is sunny but cool. The expected high temperature is 10 C or 50 F. It’s definitely a hat and glove day when out walking.
Phil and our neighbor Jean went out for coffee at 10. They ended up going to two cafes and had a coffee at each.
Sandy worked on homework, ran a couple of errands and did some housekeeping chores. We’re meeting our tutor Christine at her house at 14:30 instead of the usual 10 am today since she’s still tutoring the group from Sweden.
There is a transportation strike/grève in many cities in France today. We’re hoping our local bus company isn’t taking part. But, we read on the bus web-site that they will participate in the strike/grève at sometime during the day. Not every bus line is affected and the time for each participating bus is different. Christine volunteered to meet us at the gare/train station since that’s an easy walk for us, if we can’t reach her house by bus.
We were not affected by the strike/grève. That was very convenient.
On the way to Christine’s house for our 2:30 PM / 14:30 lesson we realized that we would actually get there about 15 minutes early. Just then we received a text from Christine that she would be a half hour late. So we had 45 minutes before we needed to be at Christine’s house. We ended up taking the bus to the Paramé Mairie stop which is pretty much in the middle of Paramé. We then walked over to a bar-tabac-presse to see if they had the Le Figaro magazine Sandy wanted. They did not have it. We still had 35 minutes before our lesson. So we walked across the street to sit on a park bench. We then spent 20 minutes watching people walk by, looking at the flowers, and talking about our plans for the evening.
Paramé Mairie flowers
Paramé Mairie flowers
Paramé Mairie flowers
It was about a 12 minute walk to the lesson. We eventually got to Christine’s house at 15:00 and she was waiting for us.
On the way back it threatened to rain, but we only got a few drops. The number 5 bus was about 15 minutes late, but it did not matter. It took us to the gare and there we got a number 2 bus to the Intra-Muros. Connections to the Intra-Muros are usually easy to get at 4 buses go there from the gare; the navatte (shuttle) bus, the number 1 bus, the number 2 bus and the number 3 bus.
On the walk to the apartment from the esplanade Saint-Vincent we saw a couple of cars with out of country license plates, Germany (Deutschland) and Belgium (Belgique).
German license plates
Belgium license plates
We got back to the apartment at 17:45. We were due for an aperitif at Jean and Denise’s apartment at 18:30. The aperitif session was very nice. It was the same set of people from the aperitif session we had at Natalie’s apartment on Monday evening. The French language was flowing fast and furious. But it is good experience to hear French spoken by natives.
