2006 Letter from ST. MALO/ALET, P1: Since we couldn’t go to the market in Dinan on Friday, we left in the morning for St. Malo in Brittany, a trip that took about an hour. St. Malo was to be the farthest west we would go in France. We followed the signs for a campground, and found a lovely municipal facility in Alet, which is a part of the bigger town and just across the bay from St. Malo. Here there was bus service – but only two buses ran in the morning and two in the afternoon. We got ourselves together and took the next morning bus.

It was a very short distance to the square where the bus would pick us up. What a square! It was on the water – which was clear and clean. At the end of the dock was a medieval tower that was just beautiful. In the water were some moored boats. We sat on the benches and waited. What more could anyone ask of a square?

The bus took a while to get to St. Malo. The bus had to go through lots of city streets to pick up passengers, so it was a long trip. Other campers told us that you could walk to St. Malo by going along the waterfront, but it was too long for us.

We’ve been in St. Malo before, and we loved it. On a vacation trip in the 1980’s, we had stayed here. The city is much the same. It is chock full of tourists, mostly French, lively and interesting to walk through. It looks very old, but is really a reconstruction. Like other seacoast towns, there was a large Nazi presence and the area was the scene of bitter fighting as well as bombing. But they did an excellent job of reconstruction.

Lunch was in a small restaurant that advertised that its specialty was mussels. This was no surprise since every single restaurant (and there were a great many) advertised "Moules". Considering that the town is on the Atlantic coast, there was remarkably little fish on the menus – just "moules". We walked all over the old town and settled finally on this particular restaurant. In fact, Ronald’s meal of moules turned out to be wonderful, and my Brettan "gallette" was also excellent. ( A gallette is a large buckwheat crepe served as the base of a meal. Mine was made with egg, cheese and ham.)

We went from there to walk the ramparts, looking into the city on one side of the wall and out into the Atlantic on the other. We were amazed at the huge numbers of private boats in the harbor. An American tour was on the ramparts at the same time, and we took advantage of it by listening to their guide. We strolled along, enjoying the buildings and the general carnival-like atmosphere. (continued........)