Not many people get to say that they spent their birthday in Brittany. On her eleventh birthday, we drove about an hour and half west of our B&B to a walled city of Saint-Malo in….Brittany. So Katya got to celebrate her birthday in Brittany!
Our day promised to be sunny and warm, but after morning showers pass. When we arrived to the beach of Saint-Malo, we found heavy gray clouds hanging over the city with a few sprinkles of rain in between.
Not very warm looking, is it?
Less than half an hour later though, the wind swooshed away all the clouds, and the sun came out. The kids got digging.
This is the view of Saint-Malo from the beach. This walled city was founded in the Medieval times, but it got especially notorious for piracy in the 1600-1700. As many British ships passed up the Channel, the pirates of Saint-Malo demanded payments, so to speak. 
This pretty cool building in the water is a fort built in the 17th century to protect the city. I heard there are some pirate legends surrounding it as well.
A few happy faces for you.
Our kids begged us to let them put on their swimsuits…and we let them, despite the fact that we were kind of freezing.
Look, I am wearing my JACKET and our kids are splashing in the water. Miraculously no one got sick.
I can’t remember exactly where we ate lunch in St. Malo…oh wait…no, I do. We had more crepes! Had to get our fill of those savory crepes, you know? I always get some sort of mushroom crepes and I love them!
After lunch we walked around up on the wall.
The kids climbed up this cannon only to see what they’d missed…
Look what the tide created! An awesome tide pool with a platform to jump off of. How cool is that?
Instead, since we didn’t want them to get wet again, we let them explore on the rocks around the beach by the city wall.
Awesome views from the city wall.
Topping it off with ice cream was not a bad idea either. Although ice cream is so-so around here…wish it were more like gelato.
After St. Malo, our original plan was to drive to Mont-Saint Michel, a famous beautiful Abbey situated on an island village connected to the coast by causeway. This cool thing.
We were in the area at around 4-5 pm and couldn’t justify the expensive parking price or a long way to get there. I guess we should have made it a priority more aggressively, but at the same time all of us did not feel particularly keen on fighting the crazy tourist crowds in July on a Sunday. So we took a picture from afar instead. That’s the closest you can get to the Abbey without paying for parking. So you can see that it’s a long way away, although a shuttle was provided.
We drove a bit further into the village neighboring Mont-Saint Michel’s parking lot and found a footpath that leads all the way to the island through the marsh…and quick sand? Alex and Mark ran out and played tag for a bit, covering their shoes with sheep stuff.
When we told our B&B owners about this path and how maybe we should have taken it, they said that it is absolutely crazy to do that as people get lost and get stuck in mud or whatever. They sometimes even had to get choppers to come rescue people over there. So good thing we didn’t do that.
For Katya’s birthday dinner we had pizza from the village café. Very French NOT. But it was good. Everyone had a great day despite not seeing Mount-Saint Michel up close. And Katya said she had a great birthday, even without a ton of presents.
Lyana.
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