LANNION, set amid plummeting hills and stairways, is a historic city with streets of medieval housing and a couple of interesting old churches – but it's also a centre for a burgeoning and extremely high-tech telecommunications industry, and one of modern Brittany's real success stories. Hence its rather self-satisfied nickname, ville heureuse or "happy town". In addition to admiring the half-timbered houses around the place de Général-Leclerc and along rue des Chapeliers, it's well worth climbing from the town up the 142 granite steps which lead to the twelfth-century Templar Église de Brélévenez. This church was remodelled three hundred years later to incorporate a granite bell tower, and the views from its terrace are quite stupendous.Lannion's most central hotel is the Porte de France, an eighteenth-century coaching inn at 5 rue Jean-Savidan (tel 02.96.46.54.81; €30–40), which has no restaurant. There's also a year-round hostel, Les Korrigans, conveniently positioned very near the station and the town centre at 6 rue du 73e-Territorial (tel 02.96.37.91.28, [email protected]; €8), and holding its own lively bar and restaurant.
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