April 25 - The world is your oyster. It’s up to you to find the pearls.

A man named Chris Gardner, a motivational speaker, said that and isn’t that very true. Why did I start with that?  Today I took a tour to an oyster farm here in Brittany or Bretagne as the French call it. Our port stop was actually Saint Malo on the peninsula that comprises Brittany.  The big attraction here could have been a visit to Mont Saint Michel, the famous island monastery.  Mont Saint Michel is sometimes landlocked because it’s on a bay where the tides can vary as much as 46 feet between high and low water marks.  Unfortunately my time to visit the place has passed me by.  To get there visitors have to make quite a long walk and then on the island they have to walk up a couple of hundred steps and then of course reverse their course to leave.

Instead I chose to take a tour which left in mid-afternoon and went to a fishing village called Cancale, which lies at the western end of the Bay of Mont Saint Michel.  Since it’s on the same body of water it too is subject to tremendous tides as was evident when we drove into the village.  There were lots of boats just sitting on a vast expanse of sand, some of them lying on their side, all waiting for the tide to come in.

The bus left us off on the waterfront to give us an opportunity to wander around a little.  It was a school holiday so there were lots of families, many with dogs, walking along the waterside street.  The street was lined with little cafés and crêperies.  Our guide had told us that crêpes are a specialty of this part of Brittany.  I had some time and hadn’t had lunch so I stopped in one and ordered a crêpe au chocolat.  Was it ever good! I looked in a few stores which had Breton tourist things and bought something.  

A little seafood stand and café.  Oysters were € 4.50 per dozen (that's about $5)

After reboarding the bus we proceeded just on the edge of town to La Ferme Marine, a family-owned oyster farm in Cancale.  We first saw a presentation and a film about the farming of oysters.  It was quite interesting.  I had no idea that the new oyster larvae  as they begin to develop are called spats.  They initially are grown on long sticks and when they have begun to form a shell they are scraped off the stick and put in large mesh pouches which can hold hundreds of the spats.  Here at this farm the oysters are not grown on the bottom; they are grown on racks or flats.  The pouches are placed on those in the bay and periodically turned and beaten with a stick to keep the young oysters from becoming stuck in the mesh or growing together. As the oysters get larger they are thinned out so they have more space to grow and this thinning out process happens every few months.  When the oysters have eventually reached maturity here in Brittany they use a sort of dredge that looks a little like a small barge which goes out into the water along the long lines of racks and scoops the bags up and onto the vehicle.  The oysters are then taken to the processing facility at the farm and cleaned, sorted, and packed for shipping.  France is the largest producer and consumer of oysters in Europe.

One of the pouches used for the spats

After learning about how to farm them we of course got to taste some.  There are two kinds of oysters here.  There is the cup shaped oyster which is the kind I’ve seen and that we have at home.  Rarer are the flat oysters. These have a flat shell on one side.  We had a plate with three of each.  They all tasted good, but I preferred the taste of the more traditional one.  What is amazing is that there can be such distinct differences in taste depending on where the oysters are grown.  The salinity of the water and the minerals present can make a tremendous difference in taste.  I’ve noticed that at home; oysters from the Rappahannock don’t taste the same as ones from Lynnhaven Inlet.

After sampling our oysters along with a glass of white wine, it was time to board our bus and head back to Saint Malo.  I didn’t get back on board until after 7 PM.  I had dinner reservations with a friend and barely had time to change into something more presentable.

After dinner we had a show with two Polish ladies who played the cello.  They were excellent and I thoroughly enjoyed their selection of music.  I went to the Club after that and it’s looking bleak in terms of dancing.  Most of the music wasn’t really dancing music and nobody was really getting up to dance.  I may have to take Mr. Gardner’s advice and take responsibility for finding the “pearl.” The question is can I be that uninhibited that I will 1) ask for some dance tunes to be played and 2) get up and dance even if there’s no hope of anyone else joining in.  I’ll have to summon my courage and remember that the vast majority of these people I’ll never see again.  What do you think?

A sea day tomorrow