Today’s post is one of my regular series of non-recipe mini posts, “Postcard from…”
Since it will be Shrove Tuesday this week I thought it appropriate to show somewhere that I associate with crepes for this week’s “Postcard from”. I cannot bring you Mardi Gras in Nice but I can bring you a carnival in a town that serves a lot of crepes.
Restaurants in Brittany are very often creperies serving both sweet and savoury pancakes made from buckwheat flour. Deceptively filling, my favourites are the ones folded up with ham, eggs and emmental inside. Then you can choose another one with chocolate sauce all over it for your pudding.
Vannes, is a fairly large town in the south east of Brittany. Although around ten miles inland, it is actually a port. Above you can see the quayside with all the boats, a narrow inlet stretches from the sea to the town.
Our first visit to Vannes was in 2005 but we have been back for day trips twice since whilst holidaying in nearby Quiberon and Pornichet. My first impression of Vannes’ medieval buildings was that it reminded me of Father Abraham in Smurfland or The Land of Far Far Away from Shrek. Medieval music was piped on a PA system throughout the old town when we arrived. It was carnival week and we were treated to the parade below and lots of fireworks at night.
As we walked through the old town for the first time, it was spookily quiet, there were no cars. We realised that the roads had been barricaded off for this carnival and we had a prime spot to watch all the locals parading by. There were scores of people in costume, the parade must have lasted nearly an hour.
We were especially taken with this toothless Madame showing off her bed of nails. There was some kind of spectacle taking place in the evening before all the fireworks. We had a double whammy of fireworks for it was July 14 the next day and they did it all again!
