We had two weeks vacation following Easter, so I took advantage of the opportunity to get out of Paris for a little while. The decision to visit Bretagne was somewhat arbitrary: all I knew was that I wanted to head for the ocean. The decision to opt for St. Malo (new window will open) was even more arbitrary: I can’t recall ever having heard of it before. But it’s on the coast and the guide books speak favorably of it and it’s easy to get to from Paris. I thought about renting a car so that I could explore more of Bretagne while I was there. But the automatics were outrageously expensive, and I didn’t much fancy the idea of learning to cope with a manual transmission. As it turned out, I managed to come down with a cold (my very first night even!), which seriously dampened my enthusiasm and stamina for excursions, so it’s just as well that I didn’t bother with a rental.
I arrived in the afternoon of April 10 and stayed until the morning of April 16. Easter week is a popular vacation time throughout Europe, so there were lots of tourists, especially from England (which is just across the Channel).
The walled city is all cobblestones, narrow, windy streets, and stone buildings. The parts of the city nearest the portes in the wall are the most touristy: restaurants, gift shops, and hotels galore. The gift stores aren’t quite as homogenous as usual: some focus on Breton crafts, some on Breton food and drink, some on pirate (whoops, make that corsaire) trinkets. As you move away towards the ocean, it becomes more low key.
History
I took commented tour offered by Le Petit Train de Saint Malo to familiarize myself with the walled city. And so I learned that in the 6th century, an Irish monk named Mach Low visited a hermit, Aaron, who lived on what was then an island. Over the years, "Mach Low" mutated to "Maclou", then to "Malo", and he apparently picked up a sainthood along the way. (Why our hermit friend Aaron got left out of the story was not explained.) The walls for which St. Malo is known were the brainchild of St. Malo’s first bishop, Jean de Châtillon, in the 12th century. The buildings are all stone because of a royal decree following a fire in the 14th (?) century that wiped out 3/4 of the buildings. Jacques Cartier, who is credited with discovering Canada, is probably the Malouin best known in North American. However, the corsaire Robert Surcouf seems to be sailor of whom they are most proud. It’s said of him that he trained very early at sea and embarked when he was 13 as a ship’s boy, became a merchant-captain at 20, and at 22, in 1795, he started chasing the English vessels in the Indian Ocean and earned a reputation as a fearsome corsaire with outstanding spoils. When he was 23, he and his crew of 16 captured a English warship armed with more than 200 sailors. He became one of the richest ship owners in Saint Malo where he died at 54.
The commentary was delivered in both French and English, and there were a few differences in the commentary:
- Saint Malo was nearly totally destroyed during World War II and rebuilt in the original style. (It took over a year just to catalog the building stones.) The "lower city" was destroyed by the Germans. In the English version of the commentary, the "upper city" was destroyed as a result of Allied bombardment, the result of a mistaken assumption that there were Germans still hiding out there. (They were in fact hiding out in the Fort de la Cité.) In the French commentary, American and English bombardment were responsible.
- For centuries, St. Malo was among the richest cities in France. This was largely due to the activities of the corsaires (don’t call them pirates*!), 1/3 of whose plunder went to the Crown, 1/3 to the ship owners, leaving the remaining 1/3, and a generous 1/3 it was, to be divided among the crew. In the French commentary, it was made clear that the English were the main involuntary contributors to St. Malo’s wealth (with some relatively modest contributions from the Dutch); in the English commentary, St. Malo’s benefactors remained anonymous.
*"Corsaires" had official Crown permission to pursue their activities, hence distinguishing them from freelance pirates.
Day Trip to Mont St Michel
Mont St Michel is just a bus ride (well, okay, two buses: one to Pontorson, the train station for Mont St Michel, and a second one from the station to the Mont itself) away from St Malo. Leaving a little before 10, we arrived at about 11:30; the return trip was slated for 4:00. I was a little worried about being able to fill the time, but that turned out not to be a problem.
Pictures really didn’t do much to prepare me for the reality.
The abbey seems to be all of a piece with the mont, as if it had been carved out of the earth itself. And the scale of it is immense: I have trouble picturing it as actually serving as a home to (how many at a time?) monks. I should think it would be very easy for a novice to become disoriented and lose himself for days at a time in its corridors and nooks. (I have the same trouble in the Louvre or Versailles, though, so maybe it’s just a failure of imagination.) It’s now "staffed" by about a dozen members of Les Fraternités Monastiques de Jerusalem. The men live in the abbey, while the women have a convent in the the town. They’re responsible for liturgy and also conduct retreats.
I did the audio guided tour, which, while interesting, didn’t yield any memorable insights into the abbey. I also attended the noon Mass. So, between the tour, the Mass, and a late lunch, I had only about 45 minutes for visiting the rest of the town, which was just about right. It’s mostly the usual restaurants, gift shops and hotels. There are also innumerable "museums", but if you ask the people leaving them, they’ll typically tell you that it’s just a musty room with a few stray pictures and uninteresting displays.
Day Trip to Dinard
Another day trip was to Dinard, for no particular reason, except that it was just a 10-minute ferry ride across the channel of St. Malo Bay.
In St. Malo, the tourist season (though not the high season, which is July and August) starts with Easter (or April 1, whichever comes first). Dinard, on the other hand, seems to have only the high season (again July and August) and the off season, so much of it seemed closed for the winter. Even many of the residences looked to be closed for the winter: shutters closed, gates locked, lawns overgrown.
The architecture is particularly distinctive, Victorian ornamentation but rendered in stone:
Dinard was apparently a very popular resort in the late 19th century with wealthy British who built summer homes in their familiar styles with the local building materials.
Slideshow
The rest of the pictures that I judge suitable for viewing are in this slideshow (this will open in a new window).
