St Malo 11th Dec

A very windy Monday morning. Walked the walls of the 'old city' nearly got blown away.
then the drive to Mont Saint Michel an abbey and small town perched on a small rocky outcrop. Abbey cost 7eu each entrance then we walked around the tiny town that is now mostly expensive restaurants, hotels and souvenir shops.
Started to rain, and getting dark so headed back towards Pontorson (cheaper hotels). Got a list of open hotels from the tourist office, but turns out everyone was having an earlier than usual Christmas break! After going back to the tourist office and getting the lovely (reminded me a lot of Jessica - face, hair, hands) girl there to call the rest of the list until she found a B&B out of town on a farm in a little place called Vessey. Sweet lady that didn't speak a lot of English welcomed us into her house which had an overpowering smell of apples. 30Eur for the both of us for the night including traditional French Breakfast.
Tuesday 12th Dec we headed of before sunrise hoping to see the sunrise over Mont St Michel. Almost didn't make it however as Pete was still dreaming and driving on the left side of the road (not that I was paying enough attention to notice either on the small country road!) We now have a continuous mantra after every driver change and turned corner of "stick to the right!" and Pete is banned from early morning driving.
The sun lighting the sky over the Abbey was lovely and of the hundreds of photos we took hopefully there will be a good one! Back at the B&B we had our special french breakfast that was reminiscent of every other breakfast in france, bread with jam, coffe and hot chocolate (not that I'm complaining about that bit) it was made somewhat better by the large selection of homemade jams and marmalades (hence the apples), and we had a great talk with the lady of the house. Turns out I am her first ever New Zealander in 18years of running a B&B!! Then we had a quick nosey at the cows and calves in the sheds before heading off on the long drive down to La Rochelle. Booked into the Auberge de Jeunesse (Youth Hostel) for 30eu, separate dorms for boys and girls but they gave us the wrong keys so I scared the absolute crap out of the elderly Spanish man in Peter's room when he thought he would be sharing with a girl (I wish I had a picture of the look of shock on his face he was literally speechless poor bloke!). After calming Hoshi's nerves Pete and I set off down tot he harbour to see the 3 towers (Chain, St Nicholas, Lantern) back in the day they pulled an enormous chain between 2 towers to protect the harbour. Had a lovely dinner in flash restaurant for 19eu each. I had the fish soup, steak and chips and the sorbet for dessert (delicious) and Peter had the mussels in a curry and creme fraiche sauce, cuttlefish and chocolate mousse. Also tried the house white and rose wines, which were a bit on the harsh side.