Easter in Melun and getting to Bretagne

We arrived to a packed train station in Paris the day before Easter, found a cyber café, and then realized we were not going to fidn anything affordable for the night in¨Paris (hostels were full) so we found a hotel in Melun where Terion's church is that looked like it was close to the RER station on the map. After reserving the hotel online we looked for somewhere to eat in the Montparnasse area, which I now realize Paris is oen of the hardest places in France to find good food. I ended up eating their beef specialty, what I thought would end up being like beouf bourgignon, but it turns out rognons de boeuf does not mean beef chunks, and it became Terion and I's joke for the rest of the trip. As it looked like a mushroom on the inside and tasted like it was some kind of insides of cow I knew it wasn't right and Terion who was supposed to split his roasted chicken with me wouldn't even trade a taste. For future travellers to France, rognon means kidney. After that yummy meal Terion got a crepe from a place he liked last time he was Paris which turns out is in the African sector of Paris and Boys II Men was playing at the Rex that night. After that we took the RER to Melun and we found out that the internet had shrunk the map to the hotel because it was a 40min walk away uphill, and there were no more busses. On arrival we tried to eat in the hotel's restaurant because it had signs everywhere saying 24hr food, but when no one came to wait on us they finally told us that they weren't serving anymore and if we wanted a drink from the bar next to our table we would have to move one seat over to the bar...we decided to just get some sleep. The next day was Easter and we barely made it to mass on time because my cell was still an hour behind therefore my alarm was an hr late. I'm glad I went to Terion's Pentecostal church once in Grand Rapids because that gave me an idea of what it would be like. Wayyy different from Catholic churches, everyone signing and dancing, a real celebration. And the baptism is when you're older because they say you can't have sins when you're born, and they actually sat in a bath of water in front of everyone and were surveyed on why they wanted to be baptised. I was proud that I understood the sermon in French and was glad the lyrics to the songs (in French) were displayed on the screen in front. Afterwards we ate with the church members who are our age and then played basketball and bocce ball in the park next to where two of them live. Then it was time to go back to our hotel where this time the restaurant let us eat dinner...cold chicken salads just can't compare to Easter dinners at home but it was fun to watch the other families eat.

Then the adventure began: we didn't know there were no busses the day after Easter (jour férié) so we had to walk the 40min again and just barely missed our RER into Paris, therefore missing our 9:30am train. Being that everyone was travelling there were no cheap tickets and most trains were full so we changed our ticket from going to Rennes to going to Quimpre because we were going to head there anyway. But the train we ticket went down to Nantes and back all the way up to Quimper makiing us on trains from 8:30am until 5:30pm. Once we arrived once again there were no busses so we had to walk the half hour to the hostel (luckily a really friendly German girl, Christina, was also going there and showed us the way and we made a good friend out of the whole deal). But when we got there it was full and we had to pay to sleep in a tent in the yard. Christina cooked pasta for us as we set up our tent and then we all went out for crepes and cider for dessert, specialties of the region. I wanted to die in the middle of the night though when I woke up with my teeth chattering and dew on the tent. I ended up going in the hostel and sleeping on the living room floor until I had to get up at 6am for my bus to the Pointe du Raz. Oh the joys of travelling!