{"id":291,"date":"2016-09-11T08:13:43","date_gmt":"2016-09-11T07:13:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.hailes.co.nz\/europe\/?p=291"},"modified":"2016-09-23T03:01:39","modified_gmt":"2016-09-23T02:01:39","slug":"29-saint-malo-brittany-and-paris","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hailes.co.nz\/europe\/2016\/09\/11\/29-saint-malo-brittany-and-paris\/","title":{"rendered":"(29) Saint Malo – Brittany and Paris"},"content":{"rendered":"

Thursday 8th September<\/strong> – There are a lot of saints around this area but today we went to Saint Malo, just over 50km away, \u00a0An interesting walled city on the Brittany coast. \u00a0It seems to be famous as a base for pirates apparently approved by the King. \u00a0We had a bit of fun finding a park as they were all Complete which we assumed to mean full. \u00a0We found one about a kilometre away back in the newer city and walked over. \u00a0It was pretty impressive looking but all the buildings looked a bit like they had been built by the same builder (or designed by the same. architect). \u00a0\"st-marlo-m\"<\/a>They were five stories high and looked very similar. \u00a0Maybe the town wasn’t that old. \u00a0I think around 1500s so built to a plan. \u00a0It got my tick as I did see topless bathers otherwise it was just another tourist spot. \u00a0Wandered back to our Airbnb where I cleaned the car as we are handing it back tomorrow after having it for 50 days. \u00a0We will be up arround four and a half thousand Kilometers by the time we get it back to Charles De Gaulle. \u00a0 Read our books and sorted our suitcases. \u00a0Not counting the plane we have only six big sleeps before we are home\"st-marlo\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Friday<\/strong> – Big day today, 360 or so Kilometer drive drive to our hotel then out to the airport to drop off our car. \u00a0We are on the road before nine after breakfast and saying goodbye to our host, Michelle. \"bnb-host\"<\/a> \"bnb-house\"<\/a>\u00a0She had been a great host even though her English was as bad as my French, and most of us know how bad that was. \u00a0Staying with her was almost like being at home with my Mum (who died 38 years ago). She could not have been more helpful and fussed around us. \u00a0It was good. \u00a0The place was probably centuries old, the floor creaked, the bed creaked, the walls were paper thin. \u00a0During the three nights \u00a0we were there additional guests arrived after we had gone to bed and we weren’t early. \u00a0It was really interesting talking to the others at breakfast again none of whom English was their first language. \u00a0It appeared it was quite fashionable to go to the monastery at night as there were less people and being quiet and darker you apparently got the real feel of the place.<\/p>\n

The drive to Paris was great, one stop on the way for a drink, loo stop and Diesel. \u00a0Ten euro worth as we got the car empty and wanted to return it as we found it. \u00a0Once we got into Paris the driving was just crazy, jammed up. \u00a0It took us an extra 45 minutes to get us to the hotel than the GPS started at. \u00a0We are not sure why they bothered with traffic lights and lane markings as people totally ignored them. \u00a0When your light turned green you couldn’t go anyway because cars going across in front were just blocking your way. \u00a0Some hour we made it to the hotel and illegally parked while we dropped our bags and registered \u00a0( Holiday Inn, Paris Gare de I’Est). \u00a0It was then back into the mayhem heading out to Charles de Gaulle airport to drop off the car. \u00a0I was starting to sweat a bit now as the car was showing we only had another 50K of driving left and of course there had been an accident on the motorway and once we got on we were moving slower than we were in the city. \u00a0We made it although finding the drop-off point was another issue. \u00a0We did one 7km loop and the second time were lucky enough to find a guy that hopped in a van and said follow me. \u00a0Probably \u00a0saved us an hour or so as we seemed to be \u00a0way off track. \u00a0Had done 4789 kilometres when we dropped it back. \u00a0The first thing we noticed was a yard full of cars with red number plates. \u00a0We asked why red number plates and was told they didn’t indicate anything yet we had seen no others on the whole of our trip. \u00a0The guy had said to the customer before us that “everything was easy in France”. He had no credibility. \u00a0It was sad to see the car go, a Peugeot 308 Station Wagon but not as good as the CX-5 so looking forward to getting back into that at home.\"car-return-m-r\"<\/a>Went into the airport to orientate ourselves for our Sunday departure, found terminal 2C and worked our way back on the train from there to our hotel, \u00a0It was about six by this time. \u00a0We had a cuppa, booked ourselves too a Segeay Paris tour and a bit of a rest before heading out to explore. \u00a0There were hundreds of people around but at one stage we worked out we hadn’t seen a white face for a bit and even although we hadn’t felt threatened thought we should change our direction . \u00a0Found a nice little cafe and had some fish and chips sitting at one of the tables outside. \u00a0\"paris-meal-m-r\"<\/a>We worked out that over 90% of people, mostly younger people were smoking, \u00a0Margaret was starting to notice how bad second hand smoke was. \u00a0Strolled a bit more before retiring back to the hotel.<\/p>\n

Saturday<\/strong> – our last day in Europe, a small sleep in before we were off to the underground. We thought we would head over to the vicinity of our Segway tour and then look for brunch. \u00a0We had to travel on three different lines (5, 2 & 6) but we were starting to get the hang of it so no problem except some stations were so big it took a bit of finding the correct platform. \u00a0We got off at Duplex and found a great cafe that did “English Breakfasts” for 12 euro. \u00a0A glass of orange, \u00a0Bacon, egg, toast & jam, coffee and a basket of bread. \u00a0We ate everything, again lots of people out and about and we were sitting out on the footpath so very pleasant. \u00a0Wandered over in the Eiffle Tower direction, had ourselves painted by a con artist and generally joined the throng of tourists milling around.\"effiel-margaret\"<\/a>
\nOur tour was for 1:30 with a company called Fat Tires and our guide Victor from Barcelona. \u00a0He looked a bit like Castro and was superb. \u00a0He took half an hour getting us familiar with the Segways. \u00a0I think he picked on Margaret as the person that if she could do it they all could so she was first up. \u00a0She was like a duck to water on it and soon whipping arround. \u00a0The tour was a lot of fun. \u00a0There were eight of us on it and only two wankers, not going to name what country they were from but they just did everything they were told not to do and thought they were smart. \u00a0I did laugh when he crashed into the fence after running up the back of another guy. \u00a0\"margaretrussell-segway\"<\/a>\"segway-group\"<\/a>One couple had flown over from the UK for the day to do the tour. \u00a0It was just so much fun wiping along beside the Seine amongst all the other people enjoying the sun and the atmosphere. \u00a0Thanks for recommending it Murray. \u00a0We finished around 4:30 and ended up going and having a beer with Tom and Joan from Wisconson, USA. \u00a0They owned a couple of John Deere franchises and did business with and had been to NZ on several occasions. \u00a0Joan was also a State Legislator. \u00a0We were heading back to the station when we saw a bus heading to our second to last station so we hopped on that and had a 40 minute drive through Paris which included part of the Champs \u00c9lys\u00e9e. \u00a0We had enjoyed our Fish & Chips \u00a0so much the night before we headed back there to eat before heading to our hotel and sorting our bags for tomorrow.\"louis-church\"<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Thursday 8th September – There are a lot of saints around this area but today we went to Saint Malo, just over 50km away, \u00a0An interesting walled city on the Brittany coast. \u00a0It seems to be famous as a base for pirates apparently approved by the King. \u00a0We had a bit of fun finding a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-291","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-holiday"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hailes.co.nz\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/291","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hailes.co.nz\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hailes.co.nz\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hailes.co.nz\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hailes.co.nz\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=291"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.hailes.co.nz\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/291\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":329,"href":"https:\/\/www.hailes.co.nz\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/291\/revisions\/329"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hailes.co.nz\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=291"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hailes.co.nz\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=291"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hailes.co.nz\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=291"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}