Tolin's 2024 World Cruise blog posts, Day 117, May 5, 2024, St Malo, France
Saint-Malo is a historic French port in Ille-et-Vilaine , Brittany . The walled city on the English Channel coast had a long history of piracy, earning much wealth from local extortion and overseas adventures. In 1944, the Allies heavily bombed Saint-Malo. The city changed into a popular tourist center, with a ferry terminal serving the Channel Islands of Jersey and Guernsey , as well as the Southern English settlements of Portsmouth , Hampshire and Poole , Dorset . The famous transatlantic single-handed yacht race Route du Rhum , which takes place every four years in November, is between Saint Malo and Pointe-à-Pitre in Guadeloupe . The population in 2017 was 46,097 – though this can increase to up to 300,000 in the summer tourist season. With the suburbs included, the metropolitan area's population is approximately 133,000 (2017). The population of the commune more than doubled in 1967 with the merging of three communes: Saint-Malo, Saint-Servan (