Street (Beach) Art: Saint-Malo

 

Plage de Rochebonne, Saint-Malo, Bretagne

We took a side trip to Bretagne (Brittany), partly to escape a late summer heat wave that descended on Paris, and partly to get back to an ocean for awhile. Before Paris, we'd never lived inland and even though we didn't go the beach everyday in San Francisco, there's something satisfying just in knowing that it's right there in a pinch. By contrast, in Santa Monica and Marina del Rey, every commute to work (for me) and every dog walk took you to at least the edge of the sand.

The beaches in coastal Bretagne were uniformly well-ordered and beautifully managed, inspiring at least one ephemeral work of fine art. To our surprise, Breton beaches actually had people going in the water in bathing suits! This was a jarring sight, considering our lifelong experience of icy northern California beaches that require wetsuits for any duration of watersports, and where braving the waves in only trunks or bikinis is only done on a dare, and is always followed by screams of shock at how cold unfrozen water actually can feel on a hot summer day.

Pismo Beach, Calif., circa 1977. On the beach, just not in the water.

Sunset, Plage de Rochebonne, Saint-Malo, Bretagne. 
 
La Manche (aka the English Channel) at sunset.

Click for the full panorama of Plage de Rochebonne.

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