After an 11-hour journey by train from Carcassonne, arriving at night in a city I knew nothing about, and wandering around town for an hour in search of a cheap hotel room, I wasn’t about to be picky about dining options…but even so it was immediately obvious that Quimper was a city where one could dine well and even be a little picky about it. There was a range of restaurants, mostly in the old city around the cathedrals, that would have been impressive even in a larger city, and for the most part they looked to be of well-above-average quality. The accommodation options, however, were less accommodating; avoiding the usually-overpriced handful of hotels across the road and parking lot from train station, I set off westward in hopes that this burg had an Etap Hotel (turns out they did, but it was somewhere *east* of the station). Half an hour later, when I noticed I was about to leave the town proper and undertake a trek through an industrial zone which would end at the airport several kilometers away, I threw in the towel and returned to the train station hotel options, which, as it turned out, weren’t all horrid; so it came about that I got a room at the Hôtel de la Gare, and it wasn’t even that pricey.

And I dined well that night (see sidebar) and relaxed a bit.

But I arrived in Quimper too late to even see what the city looked like; I determined at least that there was some kind of cliff looming over the city, but that was the extent of my exploration that night. In the morning I slept later than was usual on this trip (but still not as late as I usually sleep in Seattle) and then went for a ramble, specifically up Mount Frugy (the looming dark mass I’d seen the night before). To my surprise this hill turned out to be 99% residential, with only a bit of the Atlantic coast visible. So I headed back to the center of town much sooner than I’d thought I would, still no wiser about the city’s history or size except that which I could see for myself (the hill being largely covered by relatively recent construction, for instance).

Back in the Old City, I found the place still quiet, as church services were still taking place (it was a Sunday). I looked into the two cathedrals without fully entering them, just to get a glimpse of how well attended the services were, and returned to the sunny streets in search of a quick bite. Eventually the churches emptied and the streets filled with unhurried residents, resulting in a pleasant little city.

Once I managed to get inside when it was empty, I found that the nave of the Saint-Corentin cathedral is unsettling because it’s not built on a straight line…it looks like a caterpillar’s spine glorified to cathedral proportions. On the floor plan shown in the tourist information pamphlets this looks completely different from how it appears in fact—you simply have to see this to get a sense of it. Apparently when the church was being built the builders had to work around riverbanks and housing, with this result.

To the south of the cathedral, partially adjoining it in fact, I found the Breton Departmental Museum, which was one of the most enjoyable museums I visited in this entire trip even though it is almost a hodge-podge of collections with varying foci. It ranges from the archeology of the city to its tourism posters of the 1930s, covering in between regional costumes, local painters and sculptors of the past century, medieval woodwork, porcelain, furnishings, stained glass, cloth manufacturing, and the history of the building itself. All of this for free, because I arrived on a Sunday; I felt I was ripping France off and owed it money, the way I got so much free museum time during this trip….

But really there was not much to do in Quimper on a weekend except dine, which obviously I did often. So I watched French TV to while away the nights, and on my last night there I watched in fascination as Nicolas Sarkozy was the “guest” on some interview show in which he got positively grilled on the subject of the status of Muslims in France. To my surprise, given how much negative publicity he’s been receiving this year, I thought he gave many “right” answers and did pretty well over all, taking punch after punch on various sides from a clearly hostile audience, but whether or not his statements reflect reality or just political shrewdness was beyond my ability to know, so I just watched.

Since I have written so much more for the sidebars about dining in Quimper than I’ve done about the town itself, perhaps this would be a good place to mention the excellence of rail travel in the countries I visited on this trip. Actually (from previous journeying) I can include the U.K. in my accolades on this subject: compared to the slim pickings we have with the piss-poor Amtrak remnants in the U.S., European rail travel is like a utopian dream come true. The accuracy of timetables and the clean precision of arrivals and departures blows American rail options out of the water, and that’s without even comparing relative convenience or range of destinations (an area in which the U.S., so rich in potential destinations, particularly suffers, even though the rails still exist to link them). Some of the trains are packed, some are nearly empty; regardless of bookings, the trains run regularly and they run on schedule. I was very impressed, to the point where I had Mussolini’s face floating into my mind every time a train connection worked as forecast.

Unlike BritRail trains, however, SNCF and Swiss/Dutch trains were as close to immaculate as I could hope for. In all of the aforementioned countries, however, I was aware of the importance of this rail-travel venue, whereas in the U.S. rail travel is nearly extinct as an option, with the exception of long trips between major cities (stretched over several days) and certain commuter runs along the northeastern state metropolis gamut). Trains I was on operated with an easygoing efficiency, neither rigid nor lax, which impressed me tremendously. If such a complex array of routes can be sustained in this variety of countries, why the hell are we in the U.S. stuck with such a meager set of options from such a monopoly as Amtrak that can’t even serve cities off the interstate highway network? Is it a question of marketing, of financing, or what? In any case, European rail travel is like a gift from heaven compared to the worthlessness of its American equivalent.

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Text © 2003 Mark Ellis Walker, except as noted