New Adventures

A year has come and gone since the last time I sat down to put a blog post together. We spent a very pleasant winter 2024 and spring 2025 living in California and tucking back into our old hometown life, seeing family and friends. It all passed in a whirl and although we had numerous wonderful adventures, I did not have the time or will to put them down and post them up. But now a new season is upon us and with it begins another French adventure for us. I've decided to invite you along. 

Winter in the countryside can be a bit lonely. We plan to spend the darker months by the sea, in one of our favorite locations, Saint Malo. We found a lovely apartment to rent inside the walls of the old city. We were obliged to sign a lease through the end of June, so will be able to experience the city in its many moods. We will be going back and forth between Brittany and Burgundy.

If you've read the book or seen the movie, All the Light We Cannot See, by Anthony Doerr, you will have a sense of the historic port city of Saint Malo. The apartment we have rented happens to be right across the street from the house where Marie-Laure, the protagonist of the story, lived with her uncle and we follow her footsteps, a short walk out our front door, to the beach she liked to visit. 

Saint Malo is a very busy tourist destination, and in the heart of town the shops, full of trinkets, make that abundantly clear; but we are in an out of the way corner, one block in from where the west wall meets the south one. It is a very quiet street and our building, although old like all the others intra-muros, has been completely reconstructed in the last few years from the inside out. We have a modern and clean entry, elevator and even a garage where we can park our car off the street. This is quite a luxury in this town of tiny cobbled streets.

I said that the buildings are old, but in fact almost all of Saint Malo was leveled during WWII. This devastation, 80% of the town flattened, was effected by the Americans, who some think mistakenly confused Saint Malo with the German stronghold of the Cité d’Aleth, a few hundred meters south.

Getty Images - Credit: adoc photos

After the war the idea was simply to clear the rubble and create a modern city, as was done in Le Havre and Brest, but in the end the citizens wanted to meticulously reconstruct their beautiful historic town stone by stone. This job, undertaken with amazing determination, lasted from 1947 to 1972.

Numbering of stones to facilitate accurate reconstruction - Credit: St. Malo archives

This 25 year labor of love is considered by many historians to be one of the most remarkable

reconstruction projects of all time. In the process modern plumbing was added, making the city more practical. 

I believe that such devotion and love for this place still imbues it with a happy and hopeful spirit.

On ne voit bien qu'avec le coeur. L'essentiel est invisible pour les yeux 

- Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

(“One sees clearly only with the heart. What is essential is invisible to the eyes.”) 

Walking through Saint Malo, intra muros.

If you didn't know the history, it would be difficult to imagine that you weren't walking among the original twelfth century buildings.

"Here on January 26, 1947, the first stone was laid in the reconstruction of Saint Malo."

For me, one of Saint Malo's allures is the fact that within the old city all the buildings are harmonious, built in the same style from the same stone. There is not one out of place. This makes it an aesthetic whole, unlike the typical architectural mishmash of most towns which lack coherent planning. I have only seen a few other examples of this harmony, such as Salamanca in Spain and some Paris neighborhoods designed by Haussmann. 

We have just spent our first three nights in this remarkable place. I hope to bring you many more interesting stories as the weeks roll along. 

Thank you for traveling along with us!

It is such a beautiful time of year in the countryside, which makes it a little hard to leave!

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