St Malo

Saint Malo was born on March 27, 520. He is one of the seven founder saints of Brittany. He was probably Welsh. He was a bit of a traveller, who accompanied Saint Brendan on some of his voyages. It was on one of these trips that Brendan landed on the island of Cézembre, (which you can see from the St Malo ramparts) where there lived, a dead giant. Brendan baptized this dead giant and he was very grateful. Brendan then allowed him to be dead again but, I guess full of the lord. I can’t believe that Christians actually think this is real.

Unlike most saints, Malo served out his life in peace, prayer and solitary happiness. He left behind a pretty impressive place just ripe for the Germans to blow up. It’s the rebuilt St Malo where we love visiting at the start of our French holidays. And that’s where we stepped off the ferry this morning.

Our first stop was the Hotel Chateaubriand, where we always stay, to drop off our bags (it’s always far too early to get into our room). It looks like it’s had a new paint job. It was particularly bright and cheerful and, the last time we were here (2012) it was a bit tired.

It was then straight to the Unicorn for breakfast. The morning was beautiful as was our usual meal of a galette complet. Bob was a bit unsure about the buckwheat treat but he enjoyed it once he’d worked out it was actually edible.

We then wandered up to Bob’s hotel. I wasn’t able to book him into the Chateaubriand, which fills up very quickly, and had to find him somewhere on spec. It was only six minutes walk from us and it appeared to pass muster. Bob couldn’t get into his room either so we all took the usual walk around the ramparts.

There were quite a few people enjoying the sand and the sea but there was a complete absence of surf. In fact, the water was remarkably flat. The crossing last night had felt very smooth and I think the English Channel was still to wake up. Fortunately, there was a slight breeze so the local sailing club could let the trainees out without fear of squalls.

We walked all the way round, finishing up back at our hotel, hot and ready for a drink. We grabbed seats in the cafe next to the Unicorn (there was more shade) and, while Mirinda and Bob tried to have a nice cup of tea, I had a lovely, refreshing beer. I say ‘tried’ because, as we all know, the French have no idea how to boil a kettle and think that tea will brew when the water is tepid. As we have discovered many, many times in the past, this is not true. Still, Mirinda keeps trying and it gave Bob something to talk about.

We still had a little while to kill before we could check into the hotel so we wandered around the cathedral, admiring the glorious rose window and despairing over the silly woman who thought it was acceptable to step over the small chain and take photos of the altar. A priest quickly saw her off and she was full of apologies. Everyone knows that those little chains (and velvet ropes) are there to keep people out. They are usually very effective but it only takes one inconsiderate tourist to show they are in fact penetrable and the hordes will soon swarm in. As I said, I despair.

A small lunch was had at a small lunch place, which is what Mirinda called it. Though, when I said that made it a petit dejeuner, she insisted that was breakfast. Then, finally, we checked into our hotels and snoozed for the afternoon.

We met up outside our hotel for a pre-dinner drink before heading up to the new, rooftop, panoramic, not quite 360 degrees restaurant on the fifth floor of our hotel.

Level 5, for that is what it is called, is all posh with modern twists on French dishes. I wasn’t that keen on any of the entrees so I chose the less of all the evils while Bob and Mirinda enjoyed a load of oysters. Bob wasn’t too sure about eating rabbit for the main but he enjoyed it nonetheless. We enjoyed a lovely bottle of wine, an extraordinary plate of cheese and a magnificent sunset. The perfect end to our first day.

We love St Malo and it was fantastic sharing it with Bob. We hope he liked it too. Tomorrow our holiday starts properly.