STAMP: Dinan, Brittany

I'm sitting in my hotel room in the 7th Arrondisement in Paris sipping champagne because it's my birthday. We're in the Hotel de LaTour Maubourg, small and delightful, and it looks out on a little treed square close to Les Invalides. Our room has a king-sized bed, which is almost unheard of in France, and very rococo decor - very fancy and lots of gilt - and several dark portraits of odd looking French men from a bygone era. Even a chandelier! And we're on the main floor, so no teensy-weensy elevator to take our baggage and us up four floors. Sweet!

It's cloudy, humid and about 25C here. Paris is quiet as it is August - the locals are all on vacation. Not one traffic jam on the way from the Montparnasse train station. Amazing!

We left St-Malo on the TGV at noon in brilliant, hot sunshine and went through fog, rain, and clouds on the way here. Looking forward to a shower and dinner in a local bistro. Tomorrow - St-Cler market for some bouquet garni and other herbs to replenish my supply at home. We just don't have enough time to do justice to the Musee d'Orsay. It'll have to wait to the next time.

YESTERDAY IN DINAN
We hoped to take the river cruise to Dinan from Dinard but it didn't run on Wednesdays. Instead we piled onto a local bus. We expected a rattletrap but got a modern coach with air-con and reclining seats for the 21 kms ride. Cost = E2.80 each. What a treat!

Upper Dinan

We roared through the countryside on the back roads passing typical Breton houses of stone with steep grey slate roofs, the older ones with dormers and the newer with skylights and solar panels. The second cut of hay was baled and drying in the fields. In less than an hour we were deposited in Dinan about 400m from the old town - veille ville. Here the streets are narrow and the half-timbered houses almost meet in the middle of the street, which still has a drainage channel where chamber pots were emptied. It's a medieval town with most of the ramparts still in existence. The streets were filled with tourists shopping at the little stores and enjoying the many restaurants and street cafes. It was very hot and humid, quite different from the cooler Dinard on the sea.

Down to the port

After an incredible lunch of a grande salade we walked down the hill to the river Rance. This was an even narrower lane, cobbled, with similar half-timbered houses, now turned into little boutiques and cafes. The walk was steep and about 600m. I was very glad we were heading down hill in the afternoon sun. Those walking up were dripping and stopping every 75m to rest. Dogs were lying down and refusing to go further!! But it was SOOOO worth the effort.

Vieux Port on the Rance

At the bottom was the  vieux port of Dinan on the Rance. Here the river has narrowed and can only allow pleasure craft to ply its waters. The bridge across stops the sailboats and only launches can go upstream from here.

Neither of us wanted to walk back up to catch our bus to Dinard, so we tried to get a taxi to the bus stop while drinking a huge bottle of water in a riverside bar. It arrived on our table in a child's seaside pail! No taxis would come so we squeezed onto the "Little Train" that took us up the hill with judders and stops all the way.

IMAGES: (c) Julie H. Ferguson 2011

STAMP #1: Dinard and St-Malo, Brittany

 After eight hours of hi-speed train travel and nearly missing our connection, we arrived on Monday at our pretty Hotel Pritania on the waterfront in Dinard. Carefully chosen to be 150m from the ferry to St-Malo. Our room overlooks the sailing school on the river Rance and we have a little balcony. St-Malo is just on the other side of the wide mouth of the river. The hotel is delightful with three restaurants and a conservatory (old style) where breakfast is served with large cups of excellent coffee. I say large because usually in France coffee is served very strong in demi-tasse, which are teeny cups. We ate in the traditional Breton restaurant last night and the servers were in traditional costume - stunning.

Over on the first ferry to St-Malo this morning and learned the tides are 40' here. Lucky for us it was high tide and getting on and off was easy. As we approached St-Malo the sun came out from behind a cloud bank lighting the buildings and the town walls. Old St-Malo is entirely surrounded by huge ramparts that allow visitors to walk all the way round. They are high and give views of the sea, the tall buildings within, the islands (some of which you can walk to at low tide), and towers.

I headed for the Musee de St-Malo to see what I could discover about Jaques Cartier's voyages to Canada that sailed from here and also the reconstruction of the town after the Nazis destroyed it in August 1944. Nothing much of value there until I met a very old French lady while I was drinking a coffee at the Place Chateaubriand. She remembers the German occupation as a teen, but was sent to university in Grenoble and missed the destruction. But she also remembered the reconstruction. Hard to understand all she said to me...! Cartier sailed for Canada from what is now Chateaubriand - then it was a bay called Bonne Mer but it was reclaimed from the sea about 200 years later. There I was sitting on the exact spot!!

Thence through the narrow streets, climbing a little, to reach the cathedral that was destroyed too. I wanted to see the enormous stained glass window of the bishop blessing Cartier before his voyage of discovery in 1534. The original window was lost, of course, and the new one was commemorated in 1958. It shows Cartier in armour with a vast red cloak. Behind him are his sailors and his ship, the ramparts and towers of St-Malo, all in glorious technicolor. The cathedral was full of tourists and the devout admiring its faithful rebuilding, even using some of the stones that could be salvaged.

I reconnected with my husband at the cathedral's west door and we went to lunch at a Breton creperie. Calamari crepe for main course and then, Crepe Jacques Cartier! What else could we have? The crepes are buckwheat and white flour, but the filling was toasted almonds and maple syrup. Utterly delicious! We were both tired but pursued trying to find a painting we did not buy on our last visit. Couldn't find it, but bought two others we liked very much from the artist himself - Alain Basset. Now we were loaded down, as well as footsore, and came back to our hotel. It was low tide and the hike to catch the ferry was down a very long launching ramp - likewise at the other end at Dinard. St-Malo has the biggest tides in France - 40 feet.
 

St-Malo in the sun at low tide

  Dinard at high tide

Images:  (c) Julie H. Ferguson 2011