Tuesday April 5th, 2016 was the first day of  our French language class.  We left our apartment at 9:20 am and returned at 17:20 or 5:20 pm.  We are having our class at Christine’s house. The bus ride to Christine’s house in the Paramé district of Saint-Malo is only 15 minutes, including a bus transfer at the gare.  The French lesson was 2 hours and during that time Christine used only 1 or 2 English words.  That is just what we wanted. Next lesson is Thursday.  We did get homework.  🙁

After our two-hour class, we walked back to Paramé center.  On the walk back, we went past a beautiful little church called Eglise St.Malo de Paramé. There was a war memorial in front of the church.  A very normal thing to see in France.  With the massive number of deaths in World War I, it seems like every French village was affected.  Click on the pictures to enlarge and on the WWI table to see the stats.  Over 1.3 million Frenchmen died in WWI with over  6 million casualties. In contrast 116,000 Americans were killed with over 320,000 casualties.

From the Paramé center we took the bus to the E.Leclerc shopping center. Sandy was meeting her friend Claudine there at 14:30 and there wasn’t enough time to go home and return.  We had lunch in the E.Leclerc cafeteria.  We stood in line almost 20 minutes.  Sandy had a croque monsieur sandwich and Phil had baked chicken and fries.  The price for both of these was 9 euros.  The cafeteria was offering a complete lunch with your choice of 9 salads, a main dish such as pork chops and rice, bread, dessert, and a soft drink for less than 9 euros.  There were many people eating the complete lunch.

After lunch Phil walked across the street to take care of some business with the water company and the government tax office.  The two offices are across the street from E.Leclerc and only about 100 feet from each other.  With the water company, we had to get information so we could logon to their website to review our bills and understand our usage.  Also changed our mailing address to the France address rather than the USA address.  With the tax people, it was just to change the mailing address to the France address rather than the USA address.  It took a total of 15 minutes to get both errands completed.  Not bad for a country that is known for its bureaucracy.

After lunch Sandy looked around the E.Leclerc store.  Claudine arrived and was greeting Sandy just as Christine walked in the store.  Sandy introduced them and they talked for a few minutes.  Christine was there to buy some items for her garden.

Claudine gave Sandy advice on buying cheese, ready-made tart and pie crusts, meat, and other food.  They enjoyed an espresso after shopping. It was a gorgeous sunny day with the high temperature around 15 C or 60 F.

While Sandy was in E.Leclerc, Phil walked over to the Jardinland store.  It is a large garden store.  The task was to look for chairs and a table which would fit on our small balcony.  There were some possibilities, so maybe we’ll come back on Thursday.

After Jardinland Phil walked over to Bricorama which is like an Ace Hardware store, not as big as a Lowes or Home Depot, but still a large store.  Here he ran into Christine again.  She did not find what she was looking for at E.Leclerc, so she had been looking at Bricorama, but again had no luck.  Phil mentioned to her to look at Jardinland and that is where she was headed.  At Bricorama Phil bought a smoke detector and a household fire extinguisher.

On the walk back from the bus stop to our apartment we stopped in at the tabac/presse store to say hello to the proprietor and buy a newspaper.

We had left the apartment at 9:20 and returned at 17:20.  Long day out and about.

All our pictures for April in Saint-Malo France can be viewed at 2016-04 April in Saint-Malo on Flickr.  They will open in a separate window.

All our pictures for March in Saint-Malo France can be viewed at 2016-03 March in Saint-Malo on Flickr.  They will open in a separate window.