Saturday, July 18, 2009

Finding Rajah or at least trying to

Despite the chances being very low I wanted to go to Brittany to try to find Rajah. I knew it was a long shot but still wanted to give it a try. Who knows...
Saturday morning before 9am as planned (i.e. we left at 8:59am) Wolfram and I left my place direction Plelan Le Petit. After a stop by a bakery for breakfast we took the highway.
That Saturday was one of those Saturdays in July-August where a lot of people are on the road. When I say a lot, I mean really a lot creating traffic jam at each toll gate. Not to mention that when looking at the cars around us all I could see was German, Dutch and Belgian cars. We estimated that 1 out of 20 cars was French... If it was not for the signs on the road I might have doubt being in France. To keep myself busy I took a couple of pictures of the traffic jam just to give you a feel of the kms we spent in there waiting.


The traffic jam also gave me the opportunity to see a car with a very cool license plate: BBQ is really fun on your license plate, isn't it?

A little bit more than 9 hours after we left home we arrived at the service area of Plelan Le Petit. We spent 1 hour walking the wood and roads nearby, with me calling Rajah. I guess a small part of me was hoping she would come out of one of the bushes...
Without much luck in the wood we took the car and drove around leaving posters in mail box or giving it to people when they were there. Who knows, Rajah will get hungry and might end up visiting one of the houses near the service area. My only concern is that being a very rural area almost every house has a dog (quite scary one usually) so I don't see my cat going there. But again if she is hungry she might go still.
We reached the hotel around 9pm exhausted, especially Wolfram who had been driving the whole day.
I had booked a room at Residence Hoteliere Duguesclin in Dinan, 10min from Plelan Le Petit. I was positively surprised by the hotel. Everything was new, modern and extremely clean. It even has a swimming pool (covered just in case it rains). Unfortunately we did not try it as we did not have time. The only minus was the size of the bed: it could have been a bit bigger. Definitely a place I would recommend: not only the room was very good but on top the ladies at the reception were really nice and helpful.
On top right next to the hotel is an excellent restaurant: Au coin du feu. Food was amazing: a real "diner gastronomique" :) I found out afterwards that the chef Jean-Luc Danjou has won a Bib Gourmand (that's basically what is right below a one star Michelin). Another address I would recommend for sure.

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