Saint-Malo and Mont Saint-Michel 1

I just got back from a day trip to the walled port city of Saint-Malo in Brittany and the terraced monastery of Mont Saint-Michel in Normandy and let me tell you, these places were incredible! But just so you know, I’m going to divide them into two separate blogs. This one will focus on Saint-Malo.

I woke up at 6:30, threw a baguette in the oven, ate it with nutella, walked to school and boarded the bus. Our bus was the coolest of the three buses. Not only was it the SCO Angers Football team’s (SCO stands for Sporting Club de L’Ouest), but we had Mark Melin, the director of the CIDEF program commenting for us. (CIDEF is the program I’m in and it stands for Centre International D’Etudes Francaises.) I quickly fell asleep for the three hour ride to our first stop at Saint Malo, but not before hearing that the weather forecast for the area was pouring rain. I rarely check the weather forecast so I just prayed everyone would be wrong. My prayers were answered because when we arrived around 10:30 we stepped off the bus into blaring sunlight. But the sun was very deceiving as it was still about 8 degrees Celsius or 46 Fahrenheit (thank you Mom for the wonderful red gloves you gave me!). We had until 1:30 to explore the area so my friend Liz and I headed straight for the Museum of History, which is conveniently located within the St Malo chateau.

The museum focuses on the maritime history of St Malo which is fascinating! St Malo earned notoriety for being the home of corsairs, privateers and pirates. It was also the home of Jacques Cartier, the explorer credited with discovering Canada and the romantic writer Chateaubriand. There were models of ships, various maritime instruments, and artistic representations of people and places in St Malo. After climbing about five stories worth of spiral stairs, Liz and I found our way to the top of the watch tower where you could see the harbor on one side, the Atlantic on another and the city in between. The battlements are extensive and surround the entire city. From our vantage point, we could see the cathedral, chateau and various hotels, brasseries, and creperies. (Brasserie is French for brewery, but really it’s more like a coffee shop where you can get drinks and sandwiches.)

After exploring the castle we went in search of a restaurant to eat at. This was not an easy task as gazillions of creperies, brasseries and seafood houses line the walls of the city. (While searching I munched on a Breton pastry called kouign amann, a sugary-buttery-flakey piece of goodness that melts in one’s mouth.) There was one restaurant right after another, and on both sides of the street too, so we zig-zagged from place to place looking for the best deals. We finally found “Grand-mere Augustine’s,” a restaurant that appealed to our taste buds and our wallets. Liz and I both ordered mussels and fries with cidre and a sugar crepe for eleven euro. By then, our time was up in St Malo so we headed back to Port Saint Vincent to board the bus.

While we drove along the coast in order to get to Mont Saint-Michel, I was able to see the beautiful countryside with its little farmhouses and miniature moulins (windmills). I didn’t realize, but people actually live in these ivy covered windmills, many of which had lost their sails and so more closely resembled tiny towers. At this stage of our journey Monsieur Melin began his commentary. He told us that the regions of Bretagne and Normandy are famous for their huitres (oysters), moules (mussels), chou (cabbages), cidre and galettes. He also pointed out the strange, wheeled bateaux (boats) that the fishermen use in order to traverse the miles of sand. The tides in this area are truly phenomenal; within the course of an hour the tides change from high to low covering a distance of up to 15 kilometers. Victor Hugo described them as able to change "à la vitesse d'un cheval au galop" or "as swiftly as a galloping horse." After an hour drive, we came upon Mont Saint-Michel.