Day 194: Rennes with Pierrick

13 mars 2010 (Day 194)
Life lesson learned. Don’t watch basketball games when you need to catch a tram. You will miss the tram. It was quite tragic. I was so enthralled with the game that I was watching that I lost track of time and ran down and just barely missed the tram. I then had 40 minutes until my train at a train station that was a 50 minute brisk walk away. I half walked half ran and made it in 35 minutes but I lost my scarf along the way and my legs were don’t at all happy with me. I was also drenched in sweat. I had a quick train switch in this tiny town where I walked around for 10 or 15 minutes and grabbed a pain au chocolat (all that exercise in the early morning made me hungry!). Pierrick met me in Rennes at the train station. We then drove to his house that is outside of Rennes more in the country and he showed me around. His mom is really nice and they have a cute house. Pierrick and I went to the store to go shopping (two stores actually) to get food for cooking. Pierrick is such a goof. He was making such a scene in the store and kept on losing things. He is such a space cadet. Happily he is an amazing cook. After we stopped by a patisserie to get chocolate éclairs (and an unplanned efrasier [kind of like strawberry shortcake with a different pastry]) Pierrick whipped up this delicious concoction that included boiled potatoes, sour cream, zucchini, and tomatoes.
After lunch we went into the city and walked around. Some of the older buildings are so gorgeous. My favorite part of Rennes was this quarter with really old buildings that were crooked with exposed wood. It is apparently the place for college kids to hang out Thursday nights. I don’t blame them. The rest of Rennes is kind of really ugly. We did go into a couple of really nice parks though. One had a garden with all sorts of plants. At the park we talked a lot about the girl that he likes and has liked for about three years. It is really tender because he really really loves her. He also defaults into English when he talks about her (I don’t know why). He continued to tell me about his hopeless romanticism as we warmed up these almost mini-pancake like things that you eat with smoked salmon or this fish egg paste. It was pretty good. After dinner we watched this weird movie with his mom that was really old with Bruce Willis who was a master at breaking into things. I found it kind of dumb, but to each his own. I stayed in his sister’s cute room. They are a really spiritual family though. And his mom said lots of funny stuff. She kept teasing that I needed to visit more because Pierrick cleaned and all this jazz.