Saint Malo – Brittany

As written by Doni~~

We arrived at our apartment in St Malo in Brittany in the late afternoon and were greeted by the owners, a lovely couple who proceeded to show us around and offered everything in the apartment to use or consume including champagne, hard cider which is prevalent in Brittany, fresh fruit and copious amounts of butter biscuits and chocolat!  

The apartment was in a modern neighborhood, but a very nice walk to the old walled cité of Saint Malo.  

One of the first things we noticed walking the old cité was the effects of the tides.  St. Malo is a vacation spot for the beach goers of France which is why they have a diving platform and makeshift ocean pool, but only during some parts of the day. If you look at this first picture toward the very top you will see a diving platform in the middle of the water.  When we first got to the old cité I couldn’t for the life of me figure out why they would have this.  Fast forward to the next shot taken maybe 6-8 hours later from the other side and you see the salt water pool with the same diving platform!

Like most places in Europe, St. Malo was founded years ago, originally by the Gauls in the 1st century BC. St Malo is a beautiful old walled cité that suffered many bombing raids by the Allies in the war- much was destroyed, but the French have done a wonderful job restoring it to its original glory.  We spent a number of hours  walking the old cité, drinking some of their local beers and sampling local foodstuffs.  One special pastry in Brittany is Kougin Amman which The NY Times calls the fattiest pastry in all of Europe.  It’s a good thing we are logging miles and miles of walking on this trip since we added this to our samplings— makes croissants seem downright healthy!

Our last full day in Brittany, we drove to Mont St Michel which is an island that somewhat straddles the Brittany/Normandy area.  Fortifications and an abbey have existed there since the 8th century.  Another UNESCO world heritage site, the Chateau and cité that surround the abbey are spectacular.  We went inside the abbey and promptly realized we should have done a tour as it is massive. The abbey still functions today as the home for the brotherhood and sisterhood of the abbey. It is not only a magnificent sight to see but also a pilgrimage for some. We saw quite a few people praying and meditating throughout the abbey.

Once again the tides were something to watch as they changed from when we entered the cité to when we left some hours later.  When the tides are out you can’t walk on the sand that appears without a guide as quite a lot of it is like quicksand.  Needless to say, this site on this island just offshore was a natural defensive site during a number of wars and conflicts over time.  

The five days we spent using St Malo as a base were over far too soon.  We had plans to get out in western Brittany, but never made it- St Malo offered way too much to see and do.

Here’s some low and high tide pictures of the harbor in St. Malo.

Our final stop of the trip is Paris! The next couple posts will encompass some of the obvious places we visited and a little bit of the ridiculousness we exhibited.