Saint Brieuc Tregueux

Ibis St Malo La Madeleine

La Madeleine
35400 Saint Malo, France +33 2 99821010
www.ibishotel.com

... 19th century viaduct spanning high above the port. It was beer o'clock so we found the old towns bar street and settled ourselves down on one of the outside tables. We tried two local beers a Picon and Affligate. Picon a dark beer but tasting like it contained lemonade (hmmm not sure about that one) and Affligate which was like a blonde Leffe - this was a good choice ...

... to Caen to flop into bed!

The next day (tuesday) we drove to Granville. A small coastal town near Mont St Michel! We got a cute but cheap little hotel room right on the beach. It was a great place to walk around and relax. A funny thing about the harbour is that the boats all park in the water but when its low tide they sink into the sand and are grounded! Happens twice a day and is a funny sight to see! We even went to an aquarium which ...

... whole place to ourselves for ½ hour and it
was quite a moving site. About 11,000 German remains were located in
a round open air rotunda with side rooms with 110 remains in each.
You are struck with the fact that most of the dead were just kids,
many just teenagers that probably did not have anything in common
with Hitler. Halfway around the memorial were steps leading up to
the top of the hill and a wonderful view of Mont Ste. Michel, about 4
Dinan, Brittany, France nedk

I think I died and went to heaven. We have just arrived home after sharing a plate of 'fruits de mer', which is really a plate full of seafood – oysters, whelks, periwinkles, shrimp, langoustines, prawns, and crab. We made a heck of a mess but it was delicious. We are now on the coastal town of Dinard , across the bay from St Malo from where we will depart for the UK in two days time. Hence the plentiful supply of ...

We drove down to the "Emerald Coast", and are staying in a place overlooking the sea. First we stopped over at an old castle "La Latte". It was awesome as you could just explore the whole castle. Drawbridges, ramparts, and shear walls down to the ocean below. The kids also got some nice medieval souvenirs. Also went to the beach but it's still pretty cold.
St. Malo was cool as well - a huge walled city. We walked around the whole thing and got candy from a store under a church steeple.

Thursday April 16th: departed Britain on the 8:30pm sailing from Portsmouth to St Malo. We spent the week in Brittany with Jie's mum and her husband Steve, chilled out - ate and drank very well and dug stones out of the garden. Tuesday and Wednesday were largely taken up with our initiation into the St Nicolas de Pelem pensioners walking club - not an easy task.

... Only five tables in our room, and another three in a smaller back room. The menu was not just French, it was fancy French cuisine, ... so it may as well have been Greek to Janice and I. We understood nothing. Thankfully, Dinan is a very touristy town, popular with the Brits and we found that our waitress was able to provide a very solid translation of the menu options. She also made us very very happy when she brought out the menu du jour hand written on a chalkboard menu ... and ...

... It showed up later that afternoon and we didn't have to lug it around on the public transport. Our hotel was very centrally located so we started exploring first thing. We found a cafeteria where the menu was only in Czech, so we just pointed to things that we wanted. Melanie had a mystery soup that was very good and amazing sauerkraut. Chris had Hungarian goulash with bread dumplings (that we later found out come with almost every ...

... windy!! Found some chairs on the aft deck and it was very pleasant. Balanced diet: breakfast was roll and croissant, cheese and canned oj. Lunch was fries and a strawberry torte! Trip time about 7 hours.

Arrived in Caen. There's a beach near the ferry. Took a bus to Dinard. Dinner was chicken and linguine (again - but a different sauce and quite good) and our table had 2 bottles of Muscadet wine. We walked around the town a ...