Saint-Malo side trip

Last Updated: December 6, 1999

I went to Saint-Malo, France, for the Curves and Surfaces conference.

Getting There

I took the train from Amsterdam to Saint-Malo. You have to transfer train stations in Paris. I decided to take trains that left 3 hours in Paris, which would me to walk between station and to see Notre-Dam and a few other things.

The train to Paris was 25 minutes late. I rushed my walk slightly, but I still saw Notre-Dam, the Luxemburg Gardens, and caught a glimpse of the Eiffel tower, as well as several things I didn't recognize.

On the train to Rennes, I was in the same car as Tom Lyche, who was also going to the conference. We chatted the whole way, and then he continued on past Rennes, while I got off and met my two students (Blair and Marryat) who were also going to the conference. The three of us took the train to Saint-Malo and walked from the train station to the central city.

Saint-Malo

Saint-Malo is a fortified city. The old part of the city is on what used to be an island, but is now connected by land to the rest of France. If you read a bit of what they have to say about the city, you learn that the city was heavily bombed during World War II, and rebuilt afterwards:, "reconstructed stone-by-stone". What's much harder to find are (a) pictures of the city when it was damaged (the damage doesn't look as bad as the brochures lead you to believe) and (b) that it was the allies who bombed the city, which was occupied by the Germans at the time.

I enjoyed walking around the city, along the walls, and on the beach. I was less happy with the food in Saint-Malo. There are primarily three types of restaurants: standard-fare, crepes, and Italian (pizza). The standard-fare restaurants are very similar, all offering similar sounding menus to choose from. I found the menus unexciting, and after a while, I was bored with them. The crepes were okay, but you can only eat so many before tiring of them. And I can get pizza anywhere in the world, so we only ate pizza once.

I expected the weather in Saint-Malo to be rainy (it is a costal city not too far from the North Sea), but in general the weather was very nice. Little rain and not too hot. Apparently, though, the weather is highly variable, and we just got luck.

Tides

Saint-Malo has an enormous difference in low and high tides - something like 18 meters. We visited when the tide difference wasn't at the extreme (in fact, we were there close to the smallest difference), but the difference was still tremendous. When the tide was out it was way out, and made a large beach that was nice to walk on. There were three near by islands that at low tide you could walk to. Saint-Malo itself used to be like this: an island at high tide, but it has since been connected to the mainland.

There are three nearby "islands" - at high tide. At low tide, you can walk to them. There's also a low tide swimming pool. Basically, it's a section of the beach that's walled on one side. At high tide, the wall is completely underwater. At low tide, the wall traps the water, forming a swimming pool.

Ferrets?

The city emblem (which is seen in several places) has what appears to be a ferret on it. We checked, and apparently it's either a greyhound (the city used to put out dogs to guard the island at high tide) or an ermine.

Le Mont Saint-Michel

The conference excursion was to Mt Saint Michel. The architecture is very impressive. The cheesy effects that have been added only detract slightly from the visit.

Dinan

On the conference day off, I took a boat up the river to Dinan. Dinan is another fortified city, and I found it more picturesque than St-Malo. We took the boat round-trip. However, if I were to do it over again, I would take the boat one-way and take a train back. That'd have given us more time to explore Dinan.

Train ride, Paris fiasco

The train ride back to Paris was uneventful. My students suggested I stay in Paris with them for a couple of days. My ticket to Amsterdam allowed one change, so it sounded like a good idea. Alas, the Paris train people had never seen such a ticket and couldn't figure out that I was allowed one change. So I hopped on the train to Amsterdam, and on the ride back decided I should have just bought a later ticket to A'dam and spent the days in Paris. Oh, well.