The Night We Invited the Firefighters to Dinner ... Seriously

On our second night in Dinard we decided to stay in and just have a quiet dinner at the apartment … or so we thought! Our apartment is on the top floor of a building in the middle of the town square, with a realty office and restaurant on the ground floor. We were sitting at our table eating, and the phone/buzzer rang several times. I tried to pick it up but there was no dial-tone or voice, so we just ignored it. Then my mom noticed that there were flames shooting out of something right beside our balcony/window; it looked like part of our building’s roof was on fire. It turns out the buzzer was ringing because other residents were trying to tell us that the building was on fire! So we all started freaking out, grabbed jackets & the computer, and ran down the stairs. Outside there were a bunch of people in the street saying that the chimney from the restaurant below us was on fire. It took about 15 minutes for the fire department to get there, and we were getting a little nervous; basically, the chimney was right next to the balcony off of our apartment. The firemen got it put out pretty quickly but wouldn’t let us back into our apartment for about an hour. So of course my parents kept making me go up to the firefighters/policemen, explain our situation, and try to convince them that we could go back in; that was fun! Finally we got back up there and discovered 3 firemen on the balcony in our apartment. They were using the balcony to make sure that everything was okay with the chimney. It didn’t look like they were leaving anytime soon, so we just went ahead and started eating dinner again. Each time a different firefight would enter the apartment, he’d just look at us, say “Bonsoir,” and laugh a little bit. So of course we got a picture with them! Hopefully that will be the most eventful evening we have here!