Saint Malo and Cancale are two seaside towns opposite the UK separated by the English Channel. If we were to have taken the ferry from Portsmouth, we would have arrived in busy port Saint Malo. It is said that even though it is a port, do not overlook this beautiful fortified seaside town. 25min further along the coast is Cancale, another seaside town famous for their oysters.
We drove to Saint Malo in the late morning and arrived before 11am. The beauty caught us by surprised and in fact walking around the fortified walls reminded me of the walls in Dubrovnik, Croatia. It was cold btw...
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| Outside the local restaurant where we had lunch |
We decided that today would be "seafood day" and for lunch K suggested driving further on from Saint Malo to get more authentic and more reasonably priced seafood since we felt most of the restaurants in Saint Malo would be tourist traps. We arrived at relatively unknown La Cite in 10min and wondered where to go. It was pretty quiet, like a neighbourhood. We stumbled upon this restaurant and were drawn in by the crowd already in the restaurant. We raised a few surprised eyebrows because we were the only two Asians hehe but don't get me wrong they were friendly kind of looks. Other patrons smiled at us and not surprisingly, none of them spoke English. Cue: it was time for Bel to bring out her rusty French. The table of two old ladies beside us were very friendly and very keen to strike a conversation so I tried my best to answer them. The waitress showed us their french menus and thankfully I know a few words to know if it is fish, prawns, oysters, beef, etc. It was a small area cramped with tables and we knew it was authentic frequented by the locals from what I gathered from our neighbours at the next table. They asked where were we from (many times people would first ask if we are Japanese). I explained we are Singaporeans working in London, and for this trip we are based in Pontorson and we wanted to visit Mont Saint Michel. I was quite pleased to be able to strike a basic french conversation whilst K looked on with no clue what was happening.
Later on K and I had an interesting conversation. Before coming to Europe, some people commented to us saying the French are very proud of their language and refuse to speak English. Someone even gave me a "tip" saying if you ever need help on the streets of Paris, try speaking in Mandarin first so they have no choice but to ask you back if you spoke English, so they can try helping you. Not sure how true is that, but K brought up an interesting point: if you have your own national language, surely you would be proud of it. Why do we always expect the French to know English? Why do we never, for example, expect the Japanese to speak Mandarin? Rather, we try to learn some basic Japanese phrases to help us get around in Japan. This trip we met so many friendly French people and like the two sweet elderly French ladies, they were so eager to strike a conversation - albeit in French - not like they were too proud to speak English. One of them commented how good my French is (she was too kind) and said she only knows French.. she commented it's a good thing for us to travel so far from Singapore to see the world, and to know more than one language. "C'est la vie!" she smiled before wishing us well "bonne chance pour le voyage!".
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Time for some candy crush - by the beach
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We stopped by one of the beaches near Saint Malo watching people walk by. Not too long because the weather wasn't exactly Spring.. and as you can see from the pic, K was busy playing Candy Crush!!
By the time we reached Cancale in the evening, honestly we were quite tired and didn't really explore the area. We knew we were here for our seafood dinner and so we found a cafe to sit down for a cup of tea, before adjourning to a seafood restaurant for dinner, and then driving back to Pontorson which was one hour away.
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| A typical seafood plate in Cancale |
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