An Almost Too Restful Vacation

We took our vacation this year after Jon finished the annual budget as has become our custom. We once again chose a quiet, out-of-the-way place to just kick back and relax. We drove down to Brittany on the northwest coast of France and expected to spend the better part of two weeks reading, working a puzzle, taking walks in the woods, that sort of thing. Instead we found it an unhealthily restful time which I will explain. We started off the vacation taking 11 1/2 hours to make an 8 hour trip getting to the cottage. We got lost more than usual on this trip, probably because we had to go around more cities than normal. Around cities the French often make arbitrary road name changes and there is a lack of proper signage around cities which leads often to wrong turns on our part. For example you come to a split in the highway. It may or may not have any road numbers on it and both signs say, "Paris". They are going in opposite directions, but they both say,"Paris" and we don't want to go to Paris. We have a split second to decide which Paris sign doesn't actually go to Paris. This is how we get lost. We always say that we cant take a trip without getting lost at least one time. I think we need to amend that number for trips through France. Interestingly once we got off the highway and onto the country roads leading to the vacation cottage, we found generally the signage was clear and complete in its information. At least for the most part. We wouldn't want to get spoiled by that. After a very long day we arrived at the cottage to find it unbelievably cold inside. We looked around for a heating system only to find that there wasn't one. There was an unvented kerosene heater which could provide some heat if you sat right next to it, a wimpy and basically worthless electric heater and a fireplace. We ran the kerosene heater for a couple of hours, but I personally didn't trust the thing spewing out poisonous gases as it combusted, so we ended up relying on the fireplace. (Later when we found the booklet for the kerosene heater we saw that the instructions told us to open up the house for ten minutes every hour to vent the gases. Yea, that was going to keep us warm!) So we lit the fire and tended it and kept it burning all day, then stacked it with wood for the night. After a couple of days it was working pretty well in that we weren't total icicycles in the morning and we could cope with the level of coolness in the house. The electric heater was just enough to warm the bathroom to make showering comfortable. As an aside, the shower was interesting. It was a shower in a regular tub, but the shower door only went halfway down the bathtub, leaving half the side and the whole end of the tub area unprotected from spray. The water pressure was excellent which meant the water hit our bodies and splashed out all over so each day we had to deal with a sopping wet floor and soaking wet floor mats. It reminded me of the hotel outside Paris which was so budgety, they didn't have a shower curtain at all and the floor flooded massively there as well. We were tired but thought it was just from our long day of traveling. We rested the first day and just tried to figure out how things worked around the cottage. Then the next day we did manage to go for a walk in a woods nearby and came across this small chateau. I was surprised that way out here in the country there was enough wealth to support someone living in grand style. The chateau appeared to be a public building now as there was an office downstairs and lots of people milling about. It wasn't for touring, but I did get this photo of the outside.

We continued to feel very fatigued which seemed unusual and after another day of resting and loafing Jon thought we should get out. I felt so tired I wasn't the least bit interested, but we did head off to a nearby town with some castle ruins in it. It was cold and rainy all day. Not exactly what we were hoping for. So we didn't enjoy our day out very much. The castle was in an area of this town which still retained its old medieval houses. It reminded me of Lavenham in England. I took a few photos as we walked back to our car.

Yes, the houses are that crooked and leaning in on each other.

After these two small forays out of the cottage, we continued to feel so, very tired. We read, but didn't find we had the energy for anything else - anything else at all. We didn't have energy enough to even start on working our puzzle. We literally sat around all day. We were fatigued, we slept too much and Jon was having a lowgrade headache all day. After a week or so Jon finally suggested that maybe we had mild carbon monoxide poisoning, so we let the fire go out. We spent the rest of the day and that night without any heat and the cottage got quite cold, but Jon's headache went away and we began to feel a bit better. We decided it was not safe to be warm and too cold to enjoy our remaining days so we headed home. It was only a 12 hour drive home, but we did swing my Mont Saint Michel, literally swung by and took a photo from the distance as we headed home. After being out of the cottage for a couple of days we were back to our old selves. We did almost come home with a cat. There was a very nice and friendly cat who came around and seemed quite hungry. I wondered at that since she looked well-fed and a bit fat. We thought maybe she belonged to some neighbors and had just wandered by. However she continued to hang around and she lapped up the milk we gave her and begged for more, so we found some cheese to give her and when we went to the grocery we bought some cat food. We contemplated bringing her home. Such a nice and very affectionate cat and deserving of a better life than she has, but we realized there was no way to get her home. She was just wild enough that she wouldn't let us pick her up and we had no cat carrier to confine her in the car. We found out just before we left that she was not well-fed and fat, but expecting kittens soon. Before leaving we fixed her a box under the house and left all the cat food in a dish. We let the owners of the cottage know about her and they said they would try to catch her and take her to a shelter when they arrive later this month.

They day before we left we enjoyed this gorgeous sunset. I haven't seen one so brilliant in color since leaving St. Croix.

While driving home we saw countless rainbows. Great big, wide ones. Ones with unbelievable intensity of colors and two sets of double rainbows. It put me in a contemplative mood and I thought how often, sitting on my deck and watching clouds skitter by or leaves rustle, would quiet my spirit and enable me to hear God's voice so clearly. It reminded me of things He has said and plans He has for my life. Those rainbows reminded me to hope.

I guess it turned out to be a good vacation after all.