(Saint-Malo, Brittany, France)

In our ongoing quest to pack as lightly as possible, it was inevitable that we had to do some laundry.  We’ve had some very entertaining laundry days abroad, but this one was quite uneventful.  There was a self-serve “Salon Lavoir” right around the corner from our hotel and we finished ahead of schedule.

The bigger drama came when I decided to go to the train station.  Given the uneasy labour situation in France, I thought it would be a good idea to buy our train tickets in advance for Vitré (our next destination) and possibly even for Paris (our final destination, in three days’ time).  The tickets for Vitré were cheap and easy,  I then tried to buy the tickets from Vitré to Paris for Sunday, July 15.  I was hoping for a departure from Vitré  at about 10:00 a.m.  This is where things got very interesting,

Train service is quite light on Sundays, especially from smaller towns like Vitré.  In addition, temperatures had been quite warm and some scheduled trains were cancelled as a result.  However, there were two additional factors at play:  the July 14 national holiday (similar to our July 1 Canada Day) and the World Cup finals on July 15 at 5:00 p.m.

Many French communities host elaborate festivities on July 14.  But France had also just qualified for the World Cup finals and massive gatherings were being planned for Paris on July 15.  The bottom line:  everybody wanted to get to Paris BEFORE the game started.

All but one of my preferred itineraries were sold out.  The other one would have cost $400 for the two of us to get from Vitré to Paris.  The only reasonably priced alternative left much later in the day and involved arriving in Paris at 6:52 p.m….just as the World Cup final would be ending.  It also meant we would be stuck in Vitré until 3:20 p.m. on a Sunday.

While we had really hoped to watch the final in Paris, we could not justify the additional cost.  Still, we would get to ride the TGV for most of our journey to Paris and we held out hope that the game might somehow be broadcast on the train.

After buying the tickets, we spent the afternoon walking around the Alet district just south of the walled city of Saint-Malo.  We rewarded ourselves with yet another dinner of galettes, crepes, and Breton cider (now supplemented by a bowl of salad).

We had enjoyed Saint-Malo, although both it and Dinard were rather crowded with summer vacationers.  Our next stop, Vitré, was rarely covered in guidebooks.  I privately worried that we would not have enough to do during our stay there from July 13-15…especially as our stay included both Bastille Day and most of World Cup Final Sunday.  Hopefully it all works out!

(Saint-Malo, Brittany, France)

The Breton city of Saint-Malo is located on the English Channel, a couple of hours (by very slow trains) southwest of Bayeux.  We decided to stay here for a few days because of its famous walled old town.  We also knew that there was a laundromat (as we were at the halfway point of our trip) and that there was a connection to Jacques Cartier.  That was enough to give it a look!

Jacques Cartier was a Breton explorer who claimed (what is now) Canada for France.  He was born in in Saint-Malo in 1491, and it is not difficult to see the architectural inspiration for the old parts of Quebec City.  Saint-Malo may rely heavily on tourism today, but it originally appears to have grown rich from seafaring and, well, piracy.

Visitors are drawn to both the walled city and the city’s many sandy beaches. We’re not really into the beach scene, but we did appreciate the cool breezes coming in from the sea.  We missed that in both Rouen and Bayeux.

The walled city is larger than most and can also make you feel rather claustrophobic.  The streets are very narrow and the buildings are all very high.  While this creates shade during the day, it also seems to have stopped me from taking a lot of pictures within the walls (known locally as “intra muros”).

Another reason I didn’t take many pictures in the city itself was simple:  it was very crowded.  It has been a very warm summer so far in northern France and I think a lot of people were escaping the inland heat.  In fact, we have yet to see a drop of rain on our trip.  You’ll notice that there is a fair bit of glare in my pictures:  the sun was relentless, and the sun also doesn’t set until about 11:00 p.m. at this time of year.  We can’t complain:  it’s better than relentless rain!

There aren’t a lot of specific “must-see” sights in Saint-Malo: the main thing is to walk on top of the city walls.   A complete circuit takes about an hour, with stops, and gives some new perspectives on the narrow streets.  Alas, I can’t show them to you, as I left my camera’s memory card in our hotel room when we went for an extended walk on the walls!

Coming up:  a boat journey from Saint-Malo!