France 2026 - Day 6 / Rennes

Steps today: 18 152. So many days in a row under 20 just doesn't make sense.

Another change in home-bases today, off to Rennes.

The hotel (Kyriad) could not be better situated, we were very satisfied. Here's a shot of it from the train station 3 days later when we moved on. 

The train station itself is very interesting but hard to photograph. From the terrasses in front of the hotel watching the sun set later that day, it sort of looked like a cruise ship... or water slides...

We arrived around 11:30AM and the room was as usual not ready for us. We dumped the bags and started wandering...   around lots of obstacles and detours thanks to the "Tous Rennes Cours" event taking place in the city today.  

We eventually found a comfortable shady place to have lunch, it was really pleasant.

 

After lunch, the requisite visit to the Cathedral

And a stroll through the town.  

Rennes is known for having many half timbered houses, but I have to say that SO MANY are rundown and even graffitied that it kinda felt slummy in parts.

We stopped for a drink...

Then visited the Basilique Notre Dame de Bonne Nouvelle. I liked the colourful shadows everywhere thanks to the stained glass.

And more wandering around the city

Around 3:30 we went back to the hotel to check in and unpack.  The layout and room details were so exactly the same as the hotel in Nantes, down to the garbage cans, it made me wonder if Kyriad has just bought this hotel from Ibis, or vice-versa.  Even the proximity to the train stations was the same although that's just a coincidence.

I just asked Chap GPT and my suspicion was correct. The Ibis Styles in Nantes was formally a Kyriad and changed brands in 2019. Voila!

The entire hotel was movie themed, I guess we got the Lion King room!

We did some more wandering around afterwards...

... and thought we'd eat at the Bouillon for supper, but they turned us off by posting a sign that they would be open all day due to the race in town, then not being open after all, and also warning about running out of many menu items. 

Instead, we ended up in a mediocre place that must service bus tours.  I just wanted a salad and this one tempted me with some goat cheese and prosciutto, but it sucked.

We ended the day lounging at the terrasse in front of the hotel, you can see the sign through the trees in the picture. So nice to be 10 steps away from the door!  But on the flipside, being close to the train station sometimes attracts another element.  We had to put up with 2 Russian girls getting drunk and playing loud music on their phones while waiting for the train...  even the waiter had to ask them to keep it down.

We rolled back into the room a little after 8PM.