Quimper by bus or taxi?

We are arriving on the Prinsendam in Brest in May. I am very interested in visiting Quimper, but the train takes about 3 hours round trip, which would eat a lot into our day. The first train to Quimper doesn't leave until 10 AM, and we leave port at 5 PM, so I worry about a lack of time to visit.

Does anyone know if there is a bus available, or if a taxi might be a good option? I have emailed the tourism office in Quimper, and will also try Brest, but don't know if I will get an answer.

Quimper would be a very good choice as sadly Brest has little to offer. Does your cruise line not offer 'Quimper on Your Own' as a tour? We were there with P&O last Easter and we were taken direcly by coach from the ship to the main car park in Quimper. Took just over an hour if I remember rightly. Pretty sure there are no buses so if no excursion available looks like a taxi would be your only option.

Quimper is very pretty :) with old buildings, good shops, a fascinating indoor market and decent restaurants for lunch. .

We are on the same cruise and you might want to post this on the Roll Call board since we have discussed this port on that forum. Yes, there is a bus that leaves Brest at 9:30 but it takes 1:50 to get to Quimper. One complication is that June 2 is a National Holiday in France (Feast of the Ascension) which means many things do not run as normal. In fact, we had planned on renting a car only to discover that most of the rental car companies are closed. France is proud to be a secular country (just ask the French) but they love to celebrate any holiday (an excuse not to work). There is man on the Roll Call Board who has organized a full day private excursion (that includes Quimper) so you might want to check into that option (the last I heard he still had some room).

Hank

I don't know if you are joining Fritz, Hlitner. I did contact him when he posted about his tour, and we were the fifth couple on his list. He must have had others change their mind, as I saw his post yesterday that he still has room. I guess the company has an extra large minibus, if it can handle more than 8 customers! Even if it is a 15 seater bus, that would be better than the 40 passenger variety.

I was looking at the public bus for a back up plan, in case we didn't make the cut for his tour. I've not received an official "you are in", but neither did I see a "you were too late" notice, so I hope that means we are going with Peacham. I did try contacting him again through the site where he posted the tour details.

We're getting excited about the upcoming trip. How about you? You'll have to give me a review of Sr. Vinho, after we have our fado excursions.

Yes Nanner, we also threw ourselves on the mercy of Fritz. Both Fritz and I originally planned on renting cars for the day until we ran into the issues with the French holiday. To be honest, DW and I do not normally like being involved with a large group on a tour (to us more then 4 is too many) but circumstances dictate that this is the time to do a tour. I know that Fritz is dealing with a major French tour company, but he has not posted the info as to the size of his group. We cannot come up with a decent "backup" plan for this port so we will just have to keep the faith with Fritz. As to being excited, we are now starting to focus on the cruise. For us its 41 days on the Prinsendam followed by 6 nights in Europe (we are renting a car and driving to Belgium) followed by a 9 day cruise home on the Rotterdam. We just got home from a winter in Puerto Vallarta and are now beginning to look at the ports and make some plans (for example we have reserved rental cars in Bordeaux and Cherbourg as well as the Fado thing). As to Norway, we did a similar itinerary on the Prinsendam last year so quite a few of the Norwegian ports are still pretty fresh in our minds. The problem with having over 20 ports is that its just a lot of homework for the independent cruisers (moi). And we also need to plan aheard for other trips (the March 2012 61 day Prinsendam cruise looks interesting). But, once we get onboard in May it will be time to sit back, relax, and enjoy. At the current time we are only planning on taking a single ship excursion on the 41 day cruise...and that would be in Murmansk. Of course the problem is that HA currently has not posted any excursions for Murmansk and have stalled everyone who has inquired as to the situation.

Hank