Leaving Paris - Arriving Saint-Malo

Paris doesn't make it easy to say goodbye. Our last days we had to go back to the old favorite haunts. The Orangerie filled with those nothing-else-like-them-like-ever wall length Monets and the wonderful Paul Guillame collection d ownstairs, the W.H. Smith Bookstore, around and through the 7th, 6th, 5th and 4th arrondisements, and one more visit to the Musee D'Orsay... (Such a perfect place, I wish they'd allow us to scatter our ashes there.)

Monday 7/26, we packed, cleaned the apartment (Paul got a little compulsive, but it looked great when we left, aside from the sheets and towels hanging to dry all over the bathroom), taxied to Gare Mont Parnasse and were soon on our way to Saint-Malo. Sophie and David had already arrived at our home the day before, thanks to the wonders of internet home exchange and jet air travel. We were so happy to see Anna, mother of Sophie, holding a sign with our names and photo from the home exchange web site. Anna and her husband drove us to the very nice large apartment inside the fortress walls of St. Malo, showed us the apartment and where the car was parked, and left us with keys and a bunch of beautiful fresh veggies and a flower bouquet from her garden. Oops, forgot to mention the apricot and framboise home made jams she left us.

Even on a bright day and with lots of windows, it's still kinda dark inside the walls of a fortified town, and our arrival day and the next were overcast. The sea just outside the wall was beautiful, but the sky was grey. We wondered if perhaps 2.5 weeks was too long to stay, but we remembered that we always feel a certain yuck factor when we don't know what the heck we are doing - so we gave it some time and started getting oriented. Great ramparts, too many tourists, loads of Creperies, a few good restaurants, a small public market, really old church not destroyed by the allies, amazing low tides with long flat beaches tempting one to walk out to distant forts, but watch out for the tides coming back in - signs warn you to stay there half a day til the tides again ebb!

Next day, still overcast, we took the car, figured out the GPS and set off to tour the Cote de Emeraulde, driving west along the beautiful coast line. Families of all ages show up in droves at low tide to walk amazing distances out onto the wet beaches to dig for shellfish.

Note: those teeny tiny dots in the photo are people, there were over a hundred.

We covered four of the many peninsulas that project north into the English Channel and were surprised by the number of thriving resort towns with beautiful homes and beaches.

We climbed the watch tower at Fort La Latte

for stunning panoramic views of the coast line (so hard to capture with a point and shoot), and walked around Cap Frehel.

Brittany is named for the migrant Britons from Cornwall and Wales who settled here about 450AD, but these two forts were used to repel invasions from Brittish and others since the 14th century. Bretagne residents felt they were a country unto themselves, not beholding to France or England.

The following morning the sun shone brightly in a big blue sky. We took the water bus a 10 minute ride across the inlet or outlet to Dinard, a resort town "discovered" around 1850 by an American who built a big home on the cliff with a magnificent view.

He was followed by many more wealthy Americans and Britons. The town focuses around three beautiful wide sandy beaches filled with adults and many playful children running, swimming, digging, building.

A promenade offers a long walk along the beaches and below the cliffs, with breath taking vistas of St. Malo, sail boats, rock outcroppings and distant lands. Paul's camera just couldn't capture the amazing panarama. We are darned proud of the views of SF bay and the GG Bridge, but these vistas were close rivals... unfortunately our camera does not capture the spectacular panorama, so we'll leave it to our memory and your imagination.

We saw ads for an art show called HOPE, so we found the museum and really appreciated it. Not sure why Paul liked the above piece so much, it had beads and sequins, carefully sewn all over it. There were also videos and a huge painting of Obama. The one that touched Danice most, was this photo of a poor donkey adrift in a small boat. Let's hope he had HOPE.

Friday and mostly cloudy, a drive35 km south and west to Dinan. It's Vieille Ville (old town) has beautifully restored (after WWII) half-timber houses

and stone buildings of the earlier 15th to 17th century architecture. The cobblestone streets and stone houses are reassembled from the bombing rubble. As in many areas of France, a church may have walls and apses and towers ranging from the 12th century to the 18th. It's so exciting to see the buildings that represent the investment of so much time and hard hard work and people's lives. That and the amazing scenery are what keep us traveling. Well, but then there's the food too.