She really wanted to see le Mont St Michel, so we decided to go there and settled on St Malo as the best place to stay nearby. So we had about a day and a half to see St Malo and one day at Mont St Michel.
It's a very cute, small, medieval tourist town. Since it's right on the water, has some nice beaches and monuments, and is within spitting distance of southern England there are tons of British tourists who come there - and apparently lots of cruise ships from Florida stop here as well. As I said last time, St Malo is an in area in the western extreme of France called Brittany, a place that historically is actually more English than French. England owned Brittany for centuries, and even before that, the Bretons (native peoples of Brittany pre-Roman times) were closely related to the Celts of England and Ireland. Modern Bretons are fond of their English speaking tourists, so it's a nice place to go for people who don't speak much French.
Anyway, because of its proximity to both southern England and Normandy (the peninsula immediately south of Brittany), St Malo was badly bombed by the Allies at the end of World War II, and it was occupied by the Germans prior to that. One of the most interesting things about this town is that the buildings and such were 80% destroyed by the war, and despite that they rebuilt it in its previous image. Some of the areas are quite different, but many things, including the main cathedral, were remade with such dedication and precision that you really get the feeling of a true medieval city.
See my previous post on St Malo for some more pictures of the cute little streets.
The cathedral was our first stop, and my mom was fascinated by the differences between the old surviving sections and the newer ones. It all flows together really well, though, and someone who didn't know much about architecture would hardly know certain sections were hundreds of years newer.
Except that it has all new windows of course.
Behind it we came across this adorable little medieval chapel as well:
Nearby was the Place de la Resistance, a square dedicated to the fallen of World Wars I and II, and also the Resistors. Of course it still has a copy of General de Gaulle's speech from London, which many French towns still have in their large squares.
17th century explorer Jacques Cartier, who founded the Quebec colony, was from St Malo, so they have a considerable connection with Quebec. This is the Place de Quebec (it was very windy):
This is situated just next to the ancient walls of the city. The whole of St Malo is surrounded by high, thick walls that were not designed for war defense purposes, exactly, but to keep the English pirates from robbing the French pirates who populated the city in the 17th and 18th centuries. Of course they've existed from medieval times, during the Hundred Years' War with England, but were much more heavily fortified after that. I think most of these survived the bombing, although I'm not sure.
Going down on the other side of the walls, we came out on the beach part of the city. It was low tide so we were able to walk across the sandy area to the "National Fort." This place was again originally built for defense during the Hundred Years War (when, I might mention, St Malo was on England's side, not France's) but was more used during the town's pirating days.
We didn't get to go inside but it's a cool walk to the little island. Every day the tide comes in and covers up that whole area of land until only the tops of the rocks stick out. But during low tide it's fun to climb on them and swim in the shallow tide pools. Since it was relatively nice (although extremely windy!) weather lots of kids were out playing.
Finally we walked along the walls again and went up to a small tower overlooking the water, which was the windiest of all!
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