Chateau Challain la Potherie

We didn't get to spend much time at the Chateau the first time we visited, so decided we had to spend two nights there this time. It was well worth the money! It was lovely to waltz about the place for an entire day with nothing else to do!

This was our lux bedroom! That is the biggest, comfiest bed on the planet!

And a beautiful bathroom to go with the bedroom:

It was wedding season at the Chateau. There had been a wedding the weekend prior to us arriving and the place had been adorned with flowers. Everywhere. This bride had one healthy budget.

Quite a lot had been done to the gardens since we were there last. Here is the front yard with one of the outbuildings (not sure what it was originally but had a pool constructed inside which turned out to be too cold, so this was then covered over).

This was a gorgeous wisteria covered cottage just outside of town:

And a very cute garden shed we found in someone's yard in the town:

Next stop, Kensington Dollshouse Festival!

Saint Malo

Seems like ages since we were there! Had a few more problems with blogging apps (my idea of a blogging app is that you can write the whole thing offline and then put it onto your blog when you get internet access again. Apparently blogging app writers don't share my view or get internet access anywhere anytime) so haven't been able to post anything. Anyways, I had a bout of something, measles or chicken pox or something, by the time we got to St Malo, so I was feeling like crap and very itchy!! Also didn't look great.

St Malo is a really sweet seaside town but it had had the bejeesus bombed out of it during the second world war. There was a really interesting war memorial which was the WW2 fort constructed on top of the very old original town fort. It had been hit pretty hard by bombs/shells/whatever and had been abandoned and left forever exactly as it was. All these bits of the fortifications were missing - you could see exactly where bombs or bullets had hit the stone and steel.

Much of it had to be rebuilt but this was done in mostly a very sympathetic style. Many of the houses had names, as can be seen by the scrolls on the buildings in the pictures below.

This picture shows the cutest little tower tucked between buildings. I am guessing the tower was there first...

This appears to be a particularly old little cottage with a lot of character:

This was a gorgeous old hotel located on the waterfront. Great inspiration if you ever wanted to build a fancy miniature French hotel (if you were fortunate enough to have the space!):

The tide rose and fell on average 8.5m! It was really amazing. Our hotel was located on the waterfront, and when the tide was in, it was most of the way up the seawall just outside our window, and at low tide, there were a couple of hundred metres of beach!

The funniest thing was the sound of the seagulls. They sound very different to Australian seagulls. When we were at Paris Disneyland 3 years ago, we stayed at the Newport Bay Hotel and they played seagull noises over the PA system. To us, it sounded really fake, but imagine our surprise when we hear the exact sound coming from real seagulls in St Malo! Very strange!

Next stop, Chateau Challain la Potherie! Yay!