Belle-Île

Today we took a day trip to Belle-Île, Brittany's largest island, which is about an hour-long ferry ride from nearby Quiberon. Given the beautiful weather, we decided that we'd rent bikes on the island and spend the day exploring it.

The initial part of the ride took us through the island's inland area, which for the most part has been deforested over the years and been replaced by farms.

Our first stop was Sauzon, one of the island's two main ports (the other being Le Palais, where we disembarked). We arrived at low tide, which resulted in what was effectively a dry dock.

Some of the boats appeared to be floating, as their keels were stuck in the thick mud.

Here's a nice view of the coast just outside Sauzon, where we stopped for a break.

Next we headed to the northeast point of the island -- Îles des Poulains -- where we saw one of the island's lighthouses (small building on right of photo).

The surrounding landscapes were very nice.

The next part of our journey took us by a number of farms, with lots of cows, horses, donkeys, sheep and goats. The cow in this photo didn't seem particularly pleased with our arrival during mealtime.

After making it back to the coast, we came across a bay where there were a number of people swimming and a couple others surfing. At this point we tried to take a shortcut by ignoring the "no bikes allowed" sign and following a pedestrian trail instead. This backfired terribly, as we ended up hauling our bikes through narrow switchbacks and deep sand.

Our final stop of the day was a bluff on the western edge of the island. The area served as inspiration to Claude Monet for a number of his paintings, including this one:

The following are my photo recreations, the second of which required me to climb down the bluff.

We definitely saved the best spot for last, as this area was easily my favorite. I really liked the landscapes with the steep cliffs and rocks shooting out of the sea.

We also passed another lighthouse that allowed for a nice photo with the colorful brush in the foreground.

By this point it was getting late, so we had to bike back to the port where we disembarked. Fortunately, we just had to traverse the narrow width of the island, rather than following the roundabout path that we took on our tour.

Along the way, we passed a small village with some houses that were typical to the island.

Here's a photo of the harbor, which I took while waiting for ferry back to Quiberon.

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For dinner we went to a local creperie in Carnac. While we were exhausted from our day in Belle-Île, we wanted to make the most of our final night in Brittany with some local fare.