Saint Malo, France

 

Saint Malo, France

Anyone who read our last post will know that we had a long 1-2 days traveling from Cork, Ireland to Rennes, France. We arrived in Rennes at about 2:30pm via train, and then rented a car.

We drove North from Rennes about 1 hour to the town of Saint Malo.

If you’re interested in WW2 history, or in the history of pirates, you may want to read more about this city’s history. The whole ‘old city’ is surrounded by walls and ramparts that are in amazing condition. And one whole side looks out to the ocean with amazing sandy beaches that come right up to the walls. The tides are very large, so the difference between low tide and high tide is significant.

We had some initial challenges upon arrival: not many grocery stores open on a Sunday afternoon, a smelly little apartment that we had rented for the night, and some tired and crabby travelers. Then we had an incident of a credit card that got stuck in a parking machine. But some very helpful French staff, some dinner, and some begging … and our family of 4 were out happily walking the old city walls together.

It was stunning. Amazing. Honestly up there with one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever been.

I was so relieved! This part of our trip was logistically challenging, but it was all worth it when we saw the sandy beach behind the ramparts overlooking the ocean with a fortress out in the water…

We walked around the walls, played in the sand, checked out the outside of the local castle, and then walked through town. We couldn’t pass up the amazing desserts we saw in town – a special treat to help celebrate the beautiful place and our journey to get there.

We checked out by 8am the next morning because we had another big site to go check out: Mont Saint Michel… which will be the topic of the next post!