The web site said when I booked a room at the Hotel de France Chateaubriand in St Malo, that parking is not available. They lied. A young French girl in heels and a short black dress directed my car into a small lift and as I looked at her in the rear vision mirror to see what might happen next, she pressed a button and she began ascending and I went in the other direction, into some medieval dungeon which now served as a car park. That was a first.
St Malo was flattened in WW 11, but was rebuilt in much the same fashion as before, we are told. We toured another cathedral which only opened again in 1972 after it was bombed in 44. Travelling to new places certainly creates work. It’s going to take me years of reading to discover what went on in these places before Australia discovered it.
The walls seem to be the main attraction here and as they circle the town, we circled the town on them, trying to keep our hair on in the wind which has blown fairly steadiy all day. We climbed down some narrow stone stairs and saw a photographic exhibition in one of the towers on the wall.
The weather the last few days has been fairly ordinary, but we did see glimpses of sun today. These summer days are much like our winter ones. I saw on the French news tonight the Col du Galibier where Le Tour is heading in the next few days, covered in heavy snow. Campers, like ours three years ago in the sun, were shown sliding about in the snow. That’s going to be a sight when the riders get there.