St-Malo, France

Today was a non negotiable rest and catch up on blog day today. We had a good sleep in, I did some photo loading and typing and then headed out for a relaxing lunch. On route we checked with our reception what our rights may be in regards to refunds of our bus fare and perhaps compensation for the taxi differential (35 bus, 55 taxi share). The staff at the Mecure up until now have been the most distant that we have encountered to the level of poor, but fortunately today we had a nice obliging reception that suggested we call in today as it would not be closed being a tourist essential service.

We went there before lunch hoping for the best. We had taken an Ipad photo of the taxi receipt ready for emailing had we needed to. The lady spoke very little English but her male counterpart helped her a bit and they knew about the bus not turning up already, and were willing to refund. Once we had established that we were leaving tomorrow and unable to go to their main office they had us fill out a form for a cheque to be mailed. We emailed the receipt to their head office with them filling in French details, as John and Kirstin had the original. I sincerely hope this all concludes positively, watch this space.

We felt relieved that the issue had apparently been solved amicably and headed back into the town walls to find lunch. There are a zillion places to eat and town was very busy with a lot of shops open. As we had had such a nice lunch the other day and in our general viewing of other plates we headed to our little place off the main tourist routes. We just got a table as it was pretty full and ordered only one galette each, a coffee for Vern and a cidre for me. I had a sardine galette which had pickled sardines like white anchovies, creme fraise, cheese, egg, and tomato – it was very nice. Vern had a potato, cheese and sausage mix with a creme fraise mustard sauce, which was very tasty too. I asked the waiter who only spoke a tiny amount of English what the drink was that Vernon had the other day and after quite a bit of difficulty we managed to understand each other, including him kindly bringing me a sample of the secret ingredient in the aperitif. Ok, got you in suspense; its chestnut syrup in a good Apple Cidre. So my mission now is to purchase some chestnut syrup and try and re-create it.

We enjoyed strolling leisurely through the shops, picking up our usual dinner picnic, with the addition of dessert – one of Verns favourite pastries (€2 freshly baked) which was good but not quite as good as Dinan, some gourmet macarons (€1.60 each) and a ‘Far Bretton’ (prune custard tart) ready for Bastille on the balcony.

As we got to end of old town where you can duck onto the beach for the walk along the causeway towards the hotel we saw the tide was quite high for a change. The rate it comes in is quite fascinating, as by the time we walked the leisurely 10 minutes to the hotel there was hardly any sand on the beach. We were wading our feet and beach-coming and when I placed a piece of seaweed on a rock a metre ahead of the water, by the time I had macro focussed or two waves – I was under water! People who were swimming had to scramble back and shift towells etc. When we were sitting on our balcony later it was quite different to see that on the other side of the wall the water was deep enough to swim in right up to the wall instead of an expanse of golden sand.

We enjoyed our dinner and dessert as usual and then to our excitement saw them setting up for fireworks just outside our window and to the left on the sand – yep the tide comes in quickly and then retreats just as quickly. It was around 9:30pm at this stage and they did not let the fireworks off until 11:30pm. It was great to see the crowds below and the building excitement before hand with people cheering, chanting in French backwards and forwards to each other, music and more. We also watched the live stream from the Paris Bastille celebrations which of course we participated in two years ago. We were totally amazed by the fireworks display in 2013 and the ones being shown this evening were equally captivating (it started earlier than St. Malo). It is the most amazing 45 minute choreography that changes every couple of minutes which have to be seen to be believed and appreciated.

The fireworks at St Malo were great too, and to see them from our balcony was a real treat. Some that I have never seen before were large exploding gold and silver ones that rained down like sparkly sprinkles. I had a photo hiccup in that my remote does not work with my A6K camera – you need a plug in one – not a wireless. This made timing very difficult and I was so disappointed having to spend time with timer delay and guess work which meant I could not just relax and enjoy the show. Next time, I shall just enjoy the show and try for say one good shot LOL famous last words.