“It's time to leave. Everone ready?” Phoebe's minivan had broken down the previous day so we all pile into Didier’s car: four adults and three kids. We pray that the gendarmes won't stop us. Once we're actually on the road towards Pont-Aven, we're more relaxed. It's Sunday morning and it promises to be a gorgeous day here in Brittany.
 Our longtime friends from Seattle Didier and Phoebe moved to Brittany two years ago, to Larmor Plage, close to Lorient. Today, Pont-Aven beckons.
Once a modest village in the Middle Ages, it became a commercial center known for its watermills and its port until the 19th century. From 1864 on, Pont-Aven's unique charm attracted artists enamored with nature and light. Painting, one of the oldest art forms, brought it fame, and Paul Gauguin, one of the most admired painters in the world, assured it a place in history.
Gauguin was right: Pont-Aven is a wonderful town, a pretty market village of white houses and sloping riverbanks. Just upstream from the granite bridge at the heart of town, the promenade Xavier-Grall crisscrosses the tiny river itself on landscaped walkways, offering glimpses of venerable mansions dripping with ivy, and a little "chaos" of rocks in the stream itself.
 As we arrive in Pont-Aven we are heading straight in to a gallery “Tonnerre & Kolwolski” where Phoebe introduced us to the lady of the house, also an artist, who shares this gallery now with her son Frederique Tonnerre. But there is more: she is also the sister of Phoebe’s other best friends from Seattle, Nathalie and Michel, who are originally from Guidel, France.
So after a delicious and lazy Sunday lunch we walk along one of the watermills of Pont-Aven (once described as "14 watermills, 15 houses" in the 19th century) when we heard a tremendous exciting honk-honk! The driver of a rental car from Paris is waving and opens his window wide. A greeting: Hello Didier and Phoebe … "Quelle surprise?"as a long line of cars and motorbikes piled up behind this enthusiastic greeting. "Quelle surprise" replied Phoebe & Phoebe to Michel and Nathalie.
 Phoebe exclaims to me a moment later how lucky she is to see her two best friends from Seattle here in Pont-Aven, of all places! And I sigh once more with “how small the world has become….”! “Seattle-ites meet in Pont-Aven, in the lower Brittany of France”. In the end there were six adults and five children ,all from Seattle, meeting in the small park near Nathalie’s sister’s art gallery. The adults were playing catch-up; the children were just playing.
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