August 19, 2012 Lunch – Restaurant Egirie- Pririac-sur-Mer, dinner at Hotel Luchin

We started driving around 9:00 a.m.  Many stores open for shopping in the morning on Sunday morning.  We drove toward Le Pouliguen and stopped a small shopping mall that had a small wine shop, a boulangere, a flower, shop and a kitchen shop.  We purchased a rose wine from the area and drove on in search of a box to pack our salt and table cloth and extra wine bottles.  We stopped at a Lidl discount grocery store but they did not have any big boxes, but they did have a good dark chocolate bar with pieces of orange peel  for 1.28 Euros.   We had no idea of where to go but then we saw that it was market day at Le Pouliguen, so we stopped near the centre of town and walked to the market.  Finally at the stall of a lady selling handmade soaps I saw a banana box with a top and a bottom that looked like it would work.  Suzette asked the lady and she was kind enough to give us the box and then we bought four cakes of citron soap for 10 Euros ($13.00) from her.  We walked down to the port where the cote (point) was and bought an ice cream cone.  Suzette got coconut and I got a mixture of melon and pistachio.

 After we ate the ice cream and walked back through town and found the car park where we had left the car, Suzette suggested that we drive out the coast to the next coastal town to the north, named Piriac-sur-Mer that was one of the places near where the Guerandé oyster bar said produced the oysters we had eaten and appeared to be another petit cité de Caractere.  When we arrived in Piriac we parked and walked into the center of town and admired the many Bretagne granite houses with slate roofs and red shuttered windows.  We asked at a Poissonerie where to go for lunch and the kids recommended Le Egerie or something like that.  When we walked to the port and beside the marina and sea wall we saw the restaurant and it had an outside dining area beside the marina, so we sat down near the marina and ordered a dozen oysters and a pot of moules and frites and a pichot (50cl.) of dry white muscadet for 39 Euros.   The mussels were the best I have ever tasted.  They were incredibly tender, melt in your mouth tender and the oysters were the deep bowled type we had had the day before in Guérande that got chilled in the ice on the plate they were served on.  We put lemon juice and mignonette sauce on the oysters and let them sit while we dealt with the over one kilo of mussels in a cream, butter, white wine, and pernod sauce and the pommes frites.  We put catsup on the pommes frites and dug in. When we had eaten almost all of the mussels and all the French fries, Suzette took the last dozen or so out of their shells and we ate the cream and mussel bisque with a spoon and dipped pieces of bread into the sauce.  Finally, we finished and walked along the quai (quay) for a few blocks and then turned back toward the car and walked narrow streets of Bretagne houses, built of local stone and roofed with black slate. Very picturesque, which is what they must have meant when the town its cite de caractere designation.  

Then we drove back along the coast and at Pradel, we turned and drove across the salt flats with Suzette behind the wheel, so I could see them as Suzette drove to our Hotel Lichen.  We slept two hours until 5:00 p.m. and then went looking for tape by driving out first to Batz-sur-Mer and after finding none, to the end of the cape to Le Croisic where we found a roll in a stationary store.   We then went to the handicrafts hall we had stopped in two days previously and they were kind enough to give us some bubble wrap.  Having met our primary objectives we went back to the hotel along the coast road and say many lovely old Brittany homes and hotels.   I am particularly impressed with the wind blown pine trees with their pattern of dead and fresh growth that gives them a two toned appearance.  We got back to the hotel at around 7:00 and packed and drank a bottle of Chateau de Fontaine-Audon Sancerre, 2011 produced by Langlois-Chateau Val de Loire.  It was terrific.

Then we sat on to deck of the hotel and watched the beach and then walked to the beach and watched the sunset until around 9:00 p.m.  After the sun set we ate the last of our food with the bottle of rose wine we  had bought earlier in the day in Le Pouliguen that was not very good and marveled at our luck and good fortune to be able to take such a lovely trip.   After being with so many people wherever we went, it was a great pleasure to be quiet and alone in the dunes by the beach at La Govelle.  When it comes to crows of people less is definitely more.  There must have been 500,000 people on the beach at Baule yesterday.

Bon Appétit