Une Américaine à Redon: La Ville M'a Manqué

You know when you just have a really good day? Like the kind of day that even your 5-and-a-half hours of sleep can't ruin? Yeah. That's the kind of day Saturday was.

It started with me going to bed at around 1 am because I was at a fundraiser for Tom and Zoe's school Friday night. I woke up to my alarm at 7:30 am, feeling half dead. I went to see if Guena was up to drive me to the gare (train station) to catch my train to Rennes which left at 8:47 am. He wasn't up, in fact, and I had to knock on their bedroom door as politely as I could and remind them that they had to get up to take me. After that, the morning went smoothly and I didn't miss my train. When I got to the Gare de Rennes, I had some war-like flashbacks. You probably need the backstory to understand that. Okay so the day I left Lille to go to Redon, I had to change trains in Rennes. That one day the escalators just had to be broken, so I was forced to lug my 50-pound bag, my duffel bag and my backpack up 3 flights of very steep stairs and then down again to get to another platform. Long story short, I was glad to just have my little purse when I arrived on Saturday.
It was slightly awkward the first few minutes with Conner, I believe it was mostly because after "Hi", my next words were "I really really need to use the bathroom" (The next were "Can we get some coffee please"). After that, we bonded super quickly over the aforementioned coffee. We spent the morning just wandering around Rennes and just chatting about not only our study abroad lives, but also our lives before and what we want to do after.
Rennes is a very beautiful city. After our coffee, we went to this huge farmers market that happens every Saturday morning. There were so many fresh fruits vegetables, meats and cheeses (and cacti). We walked around all morning, Conner being a not-very-good tour guide because we kept getting lost, but it was so fun. We went to lunch at a little Italian restaurant and then we sat on a dock that jutted out into La Vilaine (the river that runs through Rennes even runs through Redon as well!) and listened to music in t-shirts because the weather was so nice. We met up with some of Conner's other exchange student friends and they were from Norway and Germany. When we were sitting in a little Brioche Dorée (a chain bakery, how cool is that), I kept looking around me and thinking, "WOW I can't believe that I am sitting around a table with a bunch of people I just met and we have virtually nothing in common yet, I am having such a good time. I can't believe this is my life." It was a really cool moment.
After our snack, we did a bit of shopping and then it was sadly time to go. Conner, Ronja (girl from Germany) and I walked to the Gare and Conner gave me about 2 heart attacks in the span of 5 minutes because 1) he almost made me miss my train because he said we had the wrong platform and 2) he tried to jump in the train to hug me goodbye and the doors basically closed on him! He's fine, if you were wondering. No train-induced injuries whatsoever.

What a great weekend... Wonder what the next one will bring! :)

Au revoir!

Cecilia