Lepod's Blog

In the weekend we drove up to St Malo, stopping at Dinan for lunch.

Dinan is a smallish town on the river Rance.  At it’s center is a walled medieval town with some fine buildings, some as old as 13th century. We had sandwiches, we found some fantastic postcards of classic French cars, a bit of touristing, then it was time to head to St Malo.

St-Malo is a walled port city on the English channel. We stayed in a very nice little hotel called the “hotel de la mer” in Saint-Servan about 10 minutes walk from St-Malo. It was ideal, we could park our car right outside, the people were very friendly and the price was quite reasonable, so I can recommend it.  After a bit of a rest, we walked to St-Malo and in through one of the doors in the wall. The city was 80% destroyed in WWII, half by the germans, the other half by the US. The Malouins decided to rebuild the town exactly as it had been using the original blocks of stone where possible. The reconstruction was only completed in the 1970’s but they did a remarkable job. Here’s a photo:

I hasten to add I got this particular picture from Wikimedia commons. Here’s some of my photos:

Inside the city is quite compact, it was hard to take photos as the buildings are several stories high and close together, blocking the light. There were heaps of tourists, lots of tourist shops, restaurants, a lovely church in the middle where a wedding was taking place, we saw the bride getting out of her limo and entering the church.  Everyone applauded her, tourists and all. Tired of walking, we jumped on le petit train which takes tourists around the streets with a french and english commentary, then we walked back to the hotel to prepare for dinner.

Next door to the hotel was a spanish restaurant so we had tapas accompanied by sangria, and then a paella with seafood, chicken, turkey, chorizo sausage and lamb, very nice it was too!

Next day we were off to Le Mont Saint Michel following the coast road via Cancale. I think I will talk about that in my next post, but I’ll leave you with the photo at the top of this page as a bit of a teaser!