St. Malo, France

We awoke to the beautiful site of sunshine and gorgeous St. Malo (pronounced San Mal-O).  It's part of Brittany and was once home to many privateers (pirates approved by the king.)  It is surrounded by granite walls and was very heavily damaged by bombings during WWII when it was occupied by the Germans. This is the setting for the book "All the Light We Cannot See" which I read years ago, but may have to revisit soon.

Not actually St. Malo, but still beautiful 

St. Malo as seen from our tender

It was rebuilt after WWII in the same style, but it is possible to see the difference when one looks closely.  It has very narrow streets, but cars are allowed which makes parking very difficult.  There were car parks all around outside the walls for those visiting the shops and restaurants.

St. Vincent's Cathedral

Lovely beach as seen from the wall

We took the tender over and had a bit of a wander around and some lunch before joining our walking tour of the town.  Lunch was good, although pricey of course; I had mussels and french fries and Michael had a caesar salad.  We forgot that you pay for water here unless you specify tap water so we had a $6 bottle of Evian water along with a lemonade and a small beer.  I think our waitress deliberately made it difficult to order.  Who doesn't understand "credit card" when you work in a restaurant just across the channel from England?  And even though they had menus with English translations and we spoke English when we asked for a seat, she gave us the French menu.

This is an ermine, which is on the flag of St. Malo.

After returning to the ship, we either napped (Michael) or played trivia with a worst yet score of 5/15 which actually was not as bad as it sounds since the winners only had 8/15.  We had a cocktail at Galileo's and chatted with a couple that just boarded in Southampton before heading down to Compass Rose for dinner.  The scheduled woman singer is ill, so they've substituted a ventriloquist instead.  We decided to pass and returned to the cabin.