NOTE: There was a small wind storm yesterday so the internet was kind of out of business... we apologize to all our fans LOL. This post is then from yesterday travel :)

Day 12 (Cap Fréhel - Trégastel)

Today was time to leave Saint-Malo and head out further into Brittany :) Our objective was to see the pink granite coast of Brittany (we read there are only 3 places in the world with this type of rock: in Brittany, Corsica and in China.

Our first stop on our way to Trégastel was Cap Fréhel. There we found huge cliffs with an extraordinary view onto the ocean. The only pity is that the weather started to change today (cloudy and windy with the temperatures falling to 15-16ºC). This rugged weather actually made for a different type of experience in the cape. The wind was really strong and could knock you off your path when walking.

The old lighthouse!

 Don't go there if you want to keep your hair style LOL.

New hair style... "Windy-Fréhel" LOL

The color of the rocks is really interesting, and the scenario with the emerald waters in the background makes this an  really nice visit.

Already here the pink granite is clearly visible. Gives a nice color to the ground

Ok, after this it was soon lunch time. That means 12-13h. We have had an earlier experience when after 14h30 was almost impossible to find anything serving food (everybody seems to enter a deep "siesta" time here in North France LOL). That meant that we had to quickly find a place to eat before 14h just to be sure we would get any food :P We had to go a bit off-route to try and find a small town, or whatever, that could have some "food place" open.

Without any previous knowledge we arrived at a place called Pléneuf. It is just by the water and seemed like nobody lived there LOL. It had a nice beach and we guessed it was one of those places that is only alive during the summer months. Still we found a cozy restaurant just by the beach that was miraculously open and we had a simple lunch there.

View of the beach of Pléneuf, seen from our small restaurant :)

We then continued towards Trégastel. The reason for choosing this place was simply because it was at an end of a well known pedestrian path along the pink granite coast which we wanted to visit. This part of our visit has become a scenic journey eheh.

Again the place is almost ghost like. Which is fine by us... lots of parking, no problems with traffic, the beach all for us... :). It is another small place but the scenario is one of the nicest so far. Check the photos :)

Beach in Trégastel

The hotel that we found is also quite amusing with all the decorations related to the sea and sea-life. It is a small family run hotel and it even has a "house-cat" in the bar area which loves to be petted.

Fishing gear in the room... quirky LOL

The hotel cat. "Le chat" ;)

The location of the hotel is also wonderful with full view to the beach. We were lucky :) Ahh we finally ate the famous "Galette Noir"and drank the Breton cider.

Les galettes and the cider in a bowl :)

Tomorrow we will do the walk along the coast.

P.S. We are also reading all your comments and emails :) Thanks.

Day 11 (Saint-Malo)

Today we explored better the town of Saint-Malo (or better said, the old town now designated by Saint-Malo "intra-muros").

Entrance to Saint-Malo

It was a port town where French corsairs/pirates lived along side with explorers/navigators and other high ranked people.

The town was 80% destroyed in WWII but it has been reconstructed as faithfully as possible to its status before the war.

The cathedral St-Vincent

Artistic stained glass from inside the cathedral

It has a huge fortification that one can walk on and look at the beautiful sea and beach landscape.

Along the ramparts

Walking on its narrow streets one can find many interesting details.

As for food it has very nice restaurants and the advice is to go for the fish / seafood (we had a really good lunch, the best food so far on the whole trip :)

@ restaurant Le Chalut... recommended :)

There are many small shops on the streets selling regional/artisan products. However there was a really funny shop with all the characters from French animation that many people know (Tintin, Asterix&Obelix, etc). Really cool store :)

Again here one can really see the huge difference in the tides...even better than in Mont-Saint-Michel. They have made an artificial swimming pool on the beach that gets completely covered during high-tide, and gets fully exposed on low tide (we guess the meaning is that people don't need to walk that far to reach the water in low tide LOL)

At low tide

High tide (same island as the top picture on the right)

High tide... can you see the swimming pool? :)

Now it is time to move again... next destination is further into the coast of Brittany.

Day 10 (Le Mont Saint-Michel)

Arrival at Mont St-Michel

Today was all about the famous Abbey in the Mont St-Michel.
Lots and lots of walking again in the old streets inside the fortification. Very nice atmosphere and the walk along the ramparts overlooking the bay is really nice.

Main street going up to the Abbey

View of the ramparts (very nice walk, amazing view)

At the ramparts (openings in the wall)

We spent the morning and left at around 15h30 so we managed to see the low tide and high tide. The interesting thing with this is that the sea like they say is extremely far away in the low tide but at high tide it reaches the fortifications.

Unfortunately we could not see this in full splendor since the tides this week were not so impressive (normally the sea can cover some of the parking lot but today that was far from happening -  they even have signs saying if it is safe or not to use the parking lots depending on their calculations of the tides :) cool

The tide at 11h00

The tide at 12h30

After walking the ramparts and the small streets we went to the abbey itself. We would recommend anybody going there to take the audio-guide tour (they give you a small "phone-like" device that as recording of every point of interest in the abbey.

A view of the abbey

It is a really impressive structure and the views from the top are also astonishing.

One of the many stairways inside the abbey

Inside the cathedral

At the top of the abbey

Huge fireplaces inside :)

We went home really tired today lots of walking up and down the streets and climbing lots of stairs LOL but it was worth it.

A final note... There was quite some people inside and the parking lots became decently filled... we wondered how this site must be in high-season... would definitely NOT recommend coming in high-season. It must be impossible to have a relaxed walk with this place full of tourists. Beginning of October seems the best choice... we were lucky with the weather so far though.

The parking lots - the closer ones to the right and most left can be totally covered by the sea! (not the case today :P )

At the end of our visit... the sky was nicer in the afternoon :)

Tomorrow is Saint-Malo visit day :)
See you!!

Day 9 (Longues-sur-Mer - Le Chaos; Dol-de-Bretagne; Saint-Malo) = 213Km

Today we were set to go straight to Saint-Malo, when we noticed that we had missed a really unique site of the WWII. This was a place containing the only in-situ large calibre weapons in Normandy (150mm canons sitting on large casemates, which composed the German Atlantic wall.

150mm guns at their original location

This things were massive. A shot reached 20Km it seemed.

The observation casemate, for directing the shots.

Nice view from inside the observation casemate. Easy to understand the location...

The site is quite amazing due to the highly preserved state of the weapons site. It is also possible to really see why they chose that place, since the view from the place is amazing over a huge area of the North Atlantic.

So, after really finishing up all the major sites of the D-Day, we went on to our next destination which was Saint-Malo.

On the way we had scheduled a short stop at a not so known village, Dol-de-Bretagne. It is a small medieval town with many beautiful houses dating from XI century.

Houses at Dol-De-Bretagne

One of the main reasons to visit Dol was the existence of one of the most impressive Neolithic menhirs in France (Menhir du Champ Dolent). It seems it is 9.3 meters tall :) I guess this is the kind of rocks the famous Obelix (Asterix&Obelix cartoons) was carrying all the time LOL

Neolithic Menhir at Dol

Obelix! LOL

After a late and quick lunch (it as past 14h30 already, and all the shops and restaurants were closed :|, hard to find anything to eat, specially on a Monday there) we headed up to our final destination of the day - Saint-Malo.
Although we were tired we managed to gather forces to go to the medieval center of Saint-Malo and walk o the beaches around the town. We decided to do that since we knew it was low tide at around 18h30 and  it is when one can walk for dozens of meters into the sea since it has receded immensely (the tides here are impressive).

The sea reaches where I took the photo!!

With the low tide one can walk into nice rocks/little islands and see the small forts that were built there among other interesting structures.

This half natural/half artificial pool only appears at low tide :)

View of Saint-Malo from a small fort on top of a rocky hill (an island at high tide)

View from the island of Grand-Bé!

So this was it for now. Our next visits will be Mont-St. Michele and Saint-Malo but now walking actually inside the old town :P