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I arrived in Lourdes on Wednesday for a brief "pilgrimage" that will last through Sunday. As with the St. Malo trip, I didn’t think it worth the trouble to lug my own computer with me, so details and pictures will have to await my return. (It’s too hard to write any length using a French keyboard!) But yes, I have participated in the candlelight procession and gone to the baths and lit candles in the grotto.

I had intended to write about my trip to St. Malo following my return on Monday, but it didn’t work out that way. Well, there were those trips to the post office to pick up packages and letters that had arrived (two different post offices, too, for some reason), and tax returns (snarl) to finish up, and a stray website problem to troubleshoot. So the account and pictures from Bretagne will just have to wait.

I’m spending part of the Easter vacation in Bretagne, specifically St. Malo. It’s a coastal town, and is known for its wall and its past as a “pirate city”. I’m very much enjoying being on the sea. I hadn’t realized how claustrophobic I was getting in Paris!

While I ordinarily don’t do product endorsements here, I have to say that Expedia.fr did very well for me. I’m staying at the Hotel Cartier, which has been recently refurbished and is very centrally located within the walls.

I decided at the last minute against bringing my computer with me, so this posting is from an Internet cafe (with, of course, a French keyboard), so I’ll have to wait until I get home to post pictures or provide more details.

French food and drink is almost always expressed in terms of "littleness". There’s the petit goûter (little snack) to accompany your afternoon cafe or tea, the petit apéro (little apéritif) to precede dinner, the petit déssert and petit cafe follow dinner (no translation needed here surely!) And even in the markets, one orders a petit poulet rôti (little roasted chicken). Without noticing, I’ve fallen into the same pattern, asking for a petit pavé de saumon (little filet of salmon) or a petit morceau de bleu de causses (a little piece of bleu de causses, my favorite blue cheese).

So it was very odd in the bakery this morning when a gentleman ordered a gros morceau de quiche paysan (a big piece of quiche paysan). The clerk repeated his request, in an amused voice, and soon the entire line was buzzing, “A big piece?” “Yes, a big piece.” “He ordered what?” “A big piece.”

(For what it’s worth, I think the piece he ended up with was the standard size.)

When I registered for classes at ICP, my advisor pointed out to me how nice it was to have a "garden" in which to have lunch and relax between classes:



Garden? A graveled courtyard with some forlorn patches of grass and a few trees, some picnic tables and benches, and planter box of geraniums?

I keep thinking of Goethe’s "Mathematicians are a kind of Frenchman; if you talk to them, they translate what is said into their own language, and then it is immediately something quite different". Something quite different indeed.