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 p...