(Saint-Malo, Brittany, France)

In our ongoing quest to pack as lightly as possible, it was inevitable that we had to do some laundry.  We’ve had some very entertaining laundry days abroad, but this one was quite uneventful.  There was a self-serve “Salon Lavoir” right around the corner from our hotel and we finished ahead of schedule.

The bigger drama came when I decided to go to the train station.  Given the uneasy labour situation in France, I thought it would be a good idea to buy our train tickets in advance for Vitré (our next destination) and possibly even for Paris (our final destination, in three days’ time).  The tickets for Vitré were cheap and easy,  I then tried to buy the tickets from Vitré to Paris for Sunday, July 15.  I was hoping for a departure from Vitré  at about 10:00 a.m.  This is where things got very interesting,

Train service is quite light on Sundays, especially from smaller towns like Vitré.  In addition, temperatures had been quite warm and some scheduled trains were cancelled as a result.  However, there were two additional factors at play:  the July 14 national holiday (similar to our July 1 Canada Day) and the World Cup finals on July 15 at 5:00 p.m.

Many French communities host elaborate festivities on July 14.  But France had also just qualified for the World Cup finals and massive gatherings were being planned for Paris on July 15.  The bottom line:  everybody wanted to get to Paris BEFORE the game started.

All but one of my preferred itineraries were sold out.  The other one would have cost $400 for the two of us to get from Vitré to Paris.  The only reasonably priced alternative left much later in the day and involved arriving in Paris at 6:52 p.m….just as the World Cup final would be ending.  It also meant we would be stuck in Vitré until 3:20 p.m. on a Sunday.

While we had really hoped to watch the final in Paris, we could not justify the additional cost.  Still, we would get to ride the TGV for most of our journey to Paris and we held out hope that the game might somehow be broadcast on the train.

After buying the tickets, we spent the afternoon walking around the Alet district just south of the walled city of Saint-Malo.  We rewarded ourselves with yet another dinner of galettes, crepes, and Breton cider (now supplemented by a bowl of salad).

We had enjoyed Saint-Malo, although both it and Dinard were rather crowded with summer vacationers.  Our next stop, Vitré, was rarely covered in guidebooks.  I privately worried that we would not have enough to do during our stay there from July 13-15…especially as our stay included both Bastille Day and most of World Cup Final Sunday.  Hopefully it all works out!