Roughing it, but somehow I don't really mind

After travelling an X number of kilometers at 130 km/h, Benoit and I finally reached our destination for the first day of our roadtrip, a town called Perros-Gueric (also and more widely-known as the city of the rose colored granit).

That would make one heck of a nice countertop!

We arrived just as the sun was setting and quickly (and illegally) parked the car in order to take advantage of such a beautiful view.  These are some of the pictures I actually took myself.

Now you see the large rock/cliff in the picture above?  Yes, we climbed it.

Now it seems to be that there is no such thing as liability in France.  If you want to do something that is potentially dangerous to your health, that is totally up to you.  For example, there were no signs telling telling us that we could or could not climb to the very top of the cliff nor ropes blocking off dangerous areas.  Neither were there steps or pathways to show us in which direction to climb.  It took us about 20 minutes to climb all the way to the top and the entire time I couldn't help but to think, "If Mom or Grandma Trach ever saw be doing this, I would never hear the end of it."  However, I can assure you that the view we saw from the summit was well worth the scrape I had on my knee.

Benoit and I were both starving ffter our "small" rock climbing adventure and decided that since we were in the heart of Brittany, it was absolutely necessary to eat at a creperie for dinner (The regional speciality of Brittany is in fact crepes, and what we call "crepes" in the United States has absolutely no relation to the actual crepes in France--sorry Mom, I know you do love your fruit and yogurt crepes at Bob Evans).  

At the creperie with our cups of hard cider.  Poor Benoit, after driving in the car all day.

Now, since we are both running on a limited budget and hotels in France are about twice the price than the hotels in the United States (exchange rate not included), we had two options concerning our sleeping arrangement.  Option #1: Drive around in the dark in a city we are both unfamiliar with until we find a camp site to plant our tent.  Option #2:  Park and sleep in the car.  Now the images you are about to see differ tremendously from the ones posted above.  Prepare yourselves...yes we chose option #2.

Thanks Benoît.

Unfortunately, Benoit nixed the "built-in shower" option whenever he bought is new car, so the theme was dingy and greasy for the rest of the day.  At least we had this to wake up to in the morning! (See picture below).

The more I think about it, the more and more I appreciate the relationship that Benoit and I have together.  To think that two people who speak different languages, come from different cultural backgrounds, spent a year apart, shared one bathroom while both being terribly sick with the flu, and now temporarily living and spending practically every waking moment together after not having seen each other for 5 months straight; what Benoit and I have is rather amazing and commendable.