celtic adventures

Even though France is a country with a strict separation of church and state - and a shrinking population of practicing Catholics, French schools have two weeks' vacation for Easter. For the first part of my break in April, I went to Dublin with one of my new French friends. On the way there, we read an interview with Al Pacino in the Air Lingus magazine. He said that he found Dublin to be a very unpretentious city, and after our visit, Emmanuelle and I agreed with him. Maybe it was because I was in an English-speaking country for the first time in 7 months, but Dublin seemed really easy.

We visited Dublin Castle, St. Patrick's Cathedral, took a walk through Phoenix Park, saw the Book of Kells at Trinity College, visited a couple of museums, and found an amazing vegetarian and gluten-free friendly restaurant just off Grafton Street. On the last day, we took the DART to Malahide Castle for a trip to the Irish Middle Ages.

After Dublin, we spent a couple of days in Paris at Emmanuelle's parents' apartment. We waited in line for 2 hours to see the Marie-Antoinette exhibit at the Grand Palais, and spent hours in the Jardin des plantes and its little zoo. I took pictures of the animals with the intention of making a vocabulary slide show, but the month without a computer may delay that entry for quite a while.

During the second week of my vacation, I took the TGV to Brest, where I met up with Viviane and Pierre who where visiting her mother. They took me all along the coast, to Quimper and Locronan, and to buy oysters and crabs at the vivier Prat-Ar-Coum. We had dinner with Viviane's brother Michel and his wife Annie. He sings in l'Ensemble choral du bout du monde, and after he told me that they'd received an award for best holiday CD in the States, I looked them up. Imagine my surprise when I discovered I already own one of his CD's!