A morning in Brest

The day starts a bit odd.  The petit dejeuner at Hotel Bellevue is good, but a bit sparse for a normal French breakfast. The coffee is trying hard to reach lukewarm temperature from below. Tired-looking French Navy personnel appears in pairs at the breakfast table (Like US Navy personnel, you can spot them from miles away by their shoes ;-) and execute non-obvious table-choices, making it look like they are going for maximum visibility.

The day proceeds like most days: Breakfast; start walking (biking after today!) to a part of the town I have not seen yet (or that I discovered on my evening excursion), then find a supermarche, and have second breakfast in the hotel before the day commences in earnest ;-)

According to the weather forecast, it will be a cloudy day today, but at 7:30 am the city is already illuminated by that strange light that I learned to love in Saint Malo. It is a bit like that pale light one encounters on sunny January days, but it is warm!

On my walk I make the mistake of looking into the window of real estate agents!  You see what I saw:

Yes, that reads 171,XXX Euros

bBut I also take time to smell the roses and whatever these other things are:

After loading up at a supermarche for deuxieme petit dejeuner (Total cost for baguette, pate, salami, feta & olives, butter, honey, 50 paper plates & 1 'real' knife & 1 'real' spoon = Euro 15, with the full-size baguette ringing in at 0.43 Euros ;-), I am typing this one half hour before checkout while being utterly amazed at the smell and taste of French foodstuff.

These are only the big blocks of cheese.  The sliced, creamy, Feta, and Camemberts take up another whole isle!

Then I make the mistake ( ;-) of taking the stairs down instead of the elevator:

I already walked by the Hotel du Gare, where on the 4th floor I am presumably will move into a seaview room in one hour.   At 8 am they refused to take my payment but insisted I take the room key already !! Try that in Vancouver, where what awaits you if you show up at noon instead of the advertised check-in time of 3pm is an 'Early Check-in Fee' of  $30.  Go & get stuffed, Managers at the Travelodge in North Vancouver!

Naturally, every decent port city needs a fortress ;-)