Rennes

Good weekend. We spent saturday in Rennes. Its a super neat place. There was a big market (2nd largest in France) in the main square, so we wandered our way to that first. It was just a normal street market, complete with fruits and veggies, meat, flowers, bread, crepes, cheese, fish... After walking through the market for a bit, we made our way to a nice park close by. Its pretty big, and apparently Rennes is well known for it. And we had a picnic! Unfortunately, the weather lied to us. It was supposed to be partly cloudy/mostly sunny and 55 degrees. The wind chill was listed as 0. LIES! It was super windy and therefore really quite cold. We still had a nice picnic though, and took lots of pictures.

Anyways, after our picnic we went wandering through the park. It was pretty nice, it had a random bird cage thing in the middle, then some nice gardens, follwed by other gardens, and a so called botannical garden with a fish pond in the middle. The whole park was very nice and green though, definitely well taken care of. So then, we realized that we had pretty much already been through the whole list of things to do in Rennes, and we still had the rest of the afternoon, as our train wasn't until 8.

So we went over to the play area and started playing. AND THERE WAS A TEETER-TOTTER! Cassie and I started teeter-tottering, naturally. Then, Sam and Kaitlin joined us on the teeter-totter. So everything is fine and dandy, and we haven't been there that long when 2 officially dressed park policemen come in. One stood off to the side, and the other came into the middle, stood very tall with his hands behind his back and said in a Very Serious Voice (in French): Pick up your bags and leave immediately. And we were all kindof in shock at his serious, but also really rude tone, and so we stood there for just one second dumbfounded, and he said, a little bit louder, and more rude/seriously: Lets go. We realized after the fact we should have just played dumb on the language bit, but who knows. He was in no mood to play games with us. And as we were grabbing our things and filing out silently, he informed us that it was for under-12 year olds. Ha! We still managed to get in 5 minutes of fun. And like as we walked out, he radioed back to someone that he got us out of there. It was all very strange. And I can understand being kicked out if we had been doing something illegal, like vandalizing or abusing the park, but we were legitimately just playing. Oh well!

After that fun experience, we went to the tourist office and got a Rennes tourist map, that had a walking tour of the center of town and all the things to see. I played tour guide (haha which I really enjoy doing for some reason. I think its fun to lead the way and read the little blurbs about everything in a funny tour guide -y voice). We did that for the afternoon, and took lots more pictures. Then it was kebab for dinner and homeward bound!

We felt bad though, because when we were waiting for our train at the station in Rennes, when we saw this kid Stephan that we know. He is this german boy who is always really nice, but he is definitely a little strange. Not sure he has a ton of friends either. So we wave to him and he came over to say hi. Well apparently, he had posted on facebook the day before "Does anyone want to go to Rennes with me tomorrow?" and no one had responded. I don't have him as a friend on facebook,but 2 or 3 of the other girls do. We felt bad though, because we had been planning this trip for a bit, and he spent the day in Rennes alone. :(

Overall it was a good time though. And pictures will be posted on facebook soon!