Two jobs this morning: you are buying breakfast and snacks for now, and you are gathering the picnic lunch you'll eat at home around 13:30. There is no lunch stop before the Mont and dinner is up on the rock, so this market is lunch. Bring the tote and the cool bag, and cash.

It runs 8:30–13:00 in the streets behind the church, around rue de la Marine. Be there before 10:00: it solves the parking, which turns brutal after, and it beats the crowd to the good stalls.

The picnic, stall by stall

• A rotisserie chicken (un poulet rôti) — the anchor of the picnic, often sold with potatoes cooked in the drippings underneath. Ask for those too.
• Bread — a baguette tradition or a small miche (meesh) from a market baker, or duck into Maison Malécot in town.
• Hard cheese for a shareable board: Comté, mimolette, aged Gouda, Emmental — all safe for Rachel. See her note below before you point at anything soft.
• Salted butter (beurre demi-sel (burr duh-mee-SELL)) — the Breton staple, for the bread and for radishes.
• Fruit and veg to graze: Plougastel strawberries, cherries, tomatoes, a bunch of radishes. Wash anything raw well before Rachel eats it.
• Something sweet — a slice of far breton (a dense prune-studded custard), or leave it to Grain de Vanille below.
• Drinks — jus de pomme fermier for Rachel, water for the cool bag.

Grain de Vanille, on the same loop

The Roellinger pâtisserie, and the single most-recommended address on your hosts' list. Kouign-amann, far breton (far bruh-TOHN), and a serious hot chocolate for Rachel. Two host tips: Roellinger's own bread is there on Saturdays and Sundays, and the croissants sell out early, which is one more reason to be here before ten.

At the cheese stall, ask "C'est au lait cru ?" (say oh lay KROO) and skip anything that is — no raw-milk soft cheeses (Camembert, Brie, Pont-l'Évêque) unless a label says pasteurisé (pas-tuh-ree-ZAY). Hard cheeses are all fine. For charcuterie, cooked ham (jambon blanc (zhahn-BOHN blahn)) is fine; skip pâté, rillettes and raw cured sausage. Wash the fruit.

The marché aux huîtres (mar-SHAY oh WEE-truh) is a row of a dozen producer stalls at the Pointe des Crolles, at the very end of the port under the lighthouse, with the oyster beds spread out below. Open roughly 9:00–19:00 daily. It is cash, and it is a ten-minute standing ritual, not a sit-down meal.

Sizes, which run backwards

• Creuses are the common cupped Pacific oysters, graded by weight from n°5 (smallest) to n°0 (largest). Counter-intuitive, but the smaller the number, the bigger the oyster.
• n°3 is the standard medium and the right first order. n°2 is a bigger, meatier mouthful.
• Plates are the flat native oysters — Cancale's historic specialty, the giant pied de cheval (pyay duh shuh-VAL). Coppery, metallic, intense, sold by the piece and dearer. Buy one to try alongside the creuses if you're curious.

Do it in five steps

• Pick a stall and order: "Une douzaine de numéro trois, s'il vous plaît."
• They shuck them to order and hand you a plate with a lemon. There's no mignonette here — it's purist.
• Pay, in cash.
• Carry the plate to the sea wall. Squeeze lemon, or eat it nature (nah-TEWR); loosen it from the shell and tip it back.
• Throw the empty shells over the wall onto the beach below — that pale beach is centuries of them, and it's the done thing.

Quality takes care of itself because they open them in front of you: the shells are shut and heavy beforehand, they smell of clean sea, the flesh is plump and the liquor clear.

Raw oysters are off the menu in pregnancy, so this one is Mark's. You hold the Grain de Vanille bag and take the better photo. If you want oysters cooked through later in the week, Au Pied d'Cheval does gratinéed ones.

Lay the picnic out on the terrace or take it down to the Port Briac cove below the house. Carve the chicken, split the cheese and bread, open the jus de pomme.

Then genuinely rest — and prep the night

• Sleep or lie down until about 15:45. Tonight ends past midnight and the mid-afternoon slump is when jet lag hits hardest; the nap is not optional.
• Before you leave, pack a warm layer each — the Mont's terraces are cold after dark even in July — plus water, the camera, and cash.
• Check the La Caserne parking reservation and the Nocturnes ticket are on your phone, and screenshot both in case signal drops in the bay.

The day-trippers drain away from late afternoon, and the Mont becomes a different, quieter place. The village streets, the ramparts and the parish church are all free to wander — only the abbey itself needs a ticket, and that is tonight's Nocturne.

The route

• Climb the Grande Rue once for the sheer spectacle, then get off it — it is the tourist gullet.
• Take the ramparts circuit and the side stairs, where the Mont is still a real medieval town.
• Look into the church of Saint-Pierre and the tiny cemetery in the upper lanes.
• Skip La Mère Poulard's €40 omelette without a second thought — it trades entirely on its name.

Book Auberge Saint-Pierre or La Vieille Auberge ahead. Calibrate before you go: you are paying for a half-timbered room inside a medieval island, not for a kitchen that will change your life. Order simply and it is a genuinely happy meal.

Order the thing that belongs here

• Agneau de pré-salé — salt-marsh lamb, grazed on the bay's tidal meadows, is the true local dish and the one to get.
• Otherwise a simple omelette, moules, or a cooked fish. A bolée (bo-LAY) of cider for Mark.

Time it so you are done around 21:30, which sets you up to enter the Nocturne at 21:45 as the light dies.

Cooked lamb and fish are clear water; ask about any cheese course. Nothing raw.

This is a separate ticket from the daytime abbey, and there is no pass that carries you from a day visit into the night — the day admission closes and the building clears before this begins. So you are doing the night route only, on its own ticket, which is exactly what the plan wants.

The ticket

• Colorama, the 2026 illuminated route. €21 full, €18 reduced. Book a timed slot online and skip the queue; it is non-refundable.
• Doors 19:30, last entry 23:00, closes midnight. Runs every evening, 3 July–31 August. Confirm at purchase that Sunday 19 July is on sale.

How to do it

Enter around 21:45, at blue hour. The route is a free, self-paced wander through the illuminated halls — church, cloister, refectory — set to light and sound. The west terrace nearly alone at dusk is the image you'll keep. Bring the warm layer; the stone holds the cold and the wind finds the terrace.

From the terrace or the ramparts, watch the bay flood. Low water was 18:24; high is 23:40 at coefficient 75 — the last strong evening tide of your week, the sea visibly closing around the rock as the night settles. This single fact is why the Mont is a Sunday and not any other night.

You cannot be cut off: the bridge only floods above coefficient 110, and July tops out near 98. The walk and the shuttle stay dry.

You got in after midnight, so the morning is deliberately empty. Coffee on the terrace, breakfast from yesterday's market haul, and no alarm.

If legs want moving, the GR34 passes the front door: fifteen minutes along it to Port Mer and back, all coast, no driving. That is the entire morning's ambition, and skipping it is also correct.

Keep it light — the afternoon and evening are long. A galette (gah-LET) in town, or something simple at the Port Mer beach cafés (Au Large among them).

Monday is France's traditional closing day. Breizh Café and the port standbys run daily in season, but glance at the door before you set your heart on a specific place, and have a second option in mind.

The best-kept medieval town in Brittany, and it photographs even better in person. Do it as one loop, downhill at the end.

The loop

• Place des Merciers — the postcard square of leaning half-timbered houses on wooden posts.
• Tour de l'Horloge — climb it. About €3.60, 158 steps, and the roofscape from the top is the reward.
• Jardin Anglais, behind the Saint-Sauveur basilica — a rampart-top garden with the view down over the Rance and its viaduct.
• Then the head of the Rue du Jerzual, which gets its own slot below because it is both the set piece and the antiques.

Photo note: shoot the Jerzual looking up the street from lower down, not down it.

The reason the antiques belong to Monday, and to this street, is that the set piece and the shopping are the same walk. A steep cobbled run of half-timbered houses falls from the old town to the river port, and nearly every ground floor is a workshop or a dealer.

What you'll pass

• Glassblowers, a luthier, weavers, painters, and brocante (bro-KAHNT) among them, Côté Broc included. You browse by descending — no detour, no schedule.
• At the bottom it becomes the Rue du Petit Fort and reaches the old river port under the viaduct, where the apéro (ah-pay-ROH) is.

What actually fits in a suitcase

• Linens (torchons (tor-SHOHN), old nappes (nap)), silver cutlery, small faïence (fah-YAHNSS), prints and postcards, nautical odds, a named café-au-lait bowl. Flat and packable is the rule — measure your case in your head first.
• Cash helps at the smaller dealers; the galleries take cards.

The climb back up is Monday's exercise. Take it slowly, with gallery stops as excuses to breathe.

A quayside table below the stone viaduct, boats on the Rance. Cider for Mark — ask for a bolée (bo-LAY) of the local brut (broot); jus de pomme fermier for Rachel, which every café here carries and which is the honourable non-alcoholic answer in Brittany, not an apology.

Twenty minutes off your feet before the drive to the coast, or longer if the light is good.

Up onto the walls at Porte Saint-Vincent and around the sea-facing half toward the Bidouane tower. Low water is 18:57, so by the time you've walked it the beach below is at its widest and the corsair city is at its most theatrical, with three hours of light still to run.

What the low tide opens up

• Fort National stands on bare sand and you can walk out to it (small entry fee; check the posted crossing times so the tide doesn't strand you).
• The Grand Bé islet, with Chateaubriand's plain sea-facing tomb, is also reachable on foot at low water — same rule: watch the returning tide, it comes back fast.

Book ahead — this is the third proper dinner of the week and it is inside the walls. This is the unmistakably-Breton event you chose over a second Japanese meal.

Where

• Bistro Autour du Beurre — the Bordier butter house's own table. Ask for the butter tasting (seaweed, smoked, Espelette, vanilla); the paddled butter alone justifies the drive, and the bistro cooking behind it is genuinely good.
• Le Cambusier — Breton producers, cooked with care, quieter than the tourist drag two streets over.
• Comptoir Breizh Café — the easy answer if the ramparts already fed you: a galette (gah-LET), cider, and a jus de pomme.

Cooked mains are all clear water. At Autour du Beurre, ask them to walk you through which butters and cheeses are pasteurised, course by course — the staff are fluent in the question.

Your actual flea market, in the open air on the quay at the foot of the fourteenth-century Tour Solidor, with the Rance estuary and Dinard across the water. Around twenty professional dealers, run by the Breton antique dealers' association for over thirty years; every Tuesday, 09:00–18:00.

Work the stalls

• Hunt the packable: linens, silver, Quimper faïence (fah-YAHNSS), old postcards and prints, nautical bits, enamel signs, named café bowls.
• Prices move a little — it's polite to ask "Vous pouvez faire un prix ?" (voo poo-vay fair an PREE) Cash gives you the leverage.
• A book market sets up on the same esplanade, and the Saint-Servan food market is two minutes away at Place Bouvet if you want fruit for the road.

Time-box it: browse to about 11:15, then leave, because lunch is not a thing you are late for today.

Le Coquillage asks for proper attire. For Mark that means a collared shirt or a jacket, closed shoes, and no shorts or sneakers; for Rachel, smart-casual of any form. A three-star dining room in France is theatre — dress for the matinee. Leave by 12:10.

Hugo Roellinger's three-Michelin-star table: fish and vegetables, wood fire, and the family spice cellar, in the dining room of his parents' old house. Budget three unhurried hours and let it unfold.

Before the day — the one call that matters

• Phone or email ahead to say Rachel is pregnant. A kitchen at this level quietly rebuilds the raw and alcohol-touched courses without a fuss.
• Request the non-alcoholic pairing — infusions, juices, and the spice work standing in for the wine. With the Roellinger cellar behind it, it is one of the best in France and a reason to come, not a consolation.
• Confirm the menu format and price when you call, so there are no surprises at the table.

Take the courses slowly; walk out to the gardens between them if you like. This is the summit of the week and nothing else today asks anything of you.

Twenty gentle minutes around the kitchen gardens and down the path toward the shore below the château, to let a long lunch settle. Then home.

Your swimming beach, five minutes' walk from the door: sand, cafés, a sailing school. Nap on it, read on it, wade or swim if you're committed — the sea is 17–18°C and honest about it.

• Kayaks rent by the hour on the sand (roughly €10–15). This is the "spontaneous and cheap" bit of water you left the door open for; take it or leave it on the day.
• Everything here is walk-in and droppable. If the lunch ran to four hours and you'd rather sleep, do that instead.

Gentle swimming is fine; you set the pace.

Sunset is 22:00 — the first of the two you actually plan for (the other is Pointe du Grouin on Thursday). Watch it from the Colette terrace or from the sand below, then home by 22:45. If you'd rather skip Colette entirely, the Port Briac cove under the house does a free version with market cheese and a bottle of jus de pomme.

Five minutes down to the beach — the one early start of the week, and the reason is moored off the sand. Wear layers you can shed, shoes you can slip off for the dinghy, and bring a towel, sunscreen, water, and any balance owed in cash.

The black-hulled bisquine — a faithful replica of the 1905 oyster-dredger La Perle, 450 m² of sail, the most canvas on any French fishing boat, with Éric Tabarly as its godfather. You board by dinghy straight off the sand (roll the trousers up), then sail the bay. Haul on a line with the crew or just hold the rail.

Bring

• A windproof layer and a hat — it is cooler and far windier on the water than on the beach.
• Sunscreen, a bottle of water, and a strap for the camera or phone.
• Shoes you can take off for the wet boarding.

On the horizon

Mont Saint-Michel, the Pointe du Grouin, the Chausey islands, and the oyster beds below you. Today's neap tide means gentle water.

A heavy, stable traditional hull on calm water is about the gentlest sailing there is. If you're prone to queasiness, sit low and toward the stern and keep your eyes on the horizon; ginger sweets are the pregnancy-safe settler — check with your OB before you rely on anything stronger. Sun and wind both bite, so cover up.

Confirm the exact meeting point and time when you book, and ask specifically for the Wednesday morning slot.

Au Large — Chez Natacha is roughly where the dinghy sets you down: a beach bistro on the front at Port Mer, on your hosts' list, open 8:00–22:00 daily. Burgers, fish and chips, and a Nordic salad people write home about, with the bay through the window. Walk to it from the sand and home from it after — the car never moves.

Everything is cooked unless you order it raw. Easy.

The other half of the gift list, and five minutes from the house. The family spice house behind Tuesday's lunch, with blends composed like perfumes for the old corsair trade routes.

What to carry home

• The signature blends — Poudre des Alizés (POO-druh day zah-lee-ZAY), Retour des Indes (ruh-TOOR day ZAND), Poudre du Vent (POO-druh dew VAHN) — plus rare peppers and vanillas. The tins are flat, they travel, and they end souvenir shopping for good.
• Buy for your own kitchen too; this is the stuff you'll wish you had more of at home.

From here, everything today runs west along one road.

Your hosts' answer to not wanting to cook, and it holds a 5.0 across 237 reviews. A tiny room on rue Général Leclerc with a garden behind: burgers on homemade brioche, halloumi for a meat-free night, Greek, Italian and Breton bits. Fast, fresh, cheap. Twenty minutes' walk or three by car, home by 20:30 with the evening clear.

The other honest play is the Fleur de Levain loaf with tomatoes and a hard cheese on the terrace — it costs nothing and risks nothing. Either way, keep supper early and light. Tonight the call is the event, not the meal.

At the desk by 21:00 so the 21:30 call has slack. That is 14:30 in Chicago (France is seven hours ahead all week).

Set-up checklist

• You already tested the wifi on Tuesday — not tonight — so any problem had a day to get solved.
• Headphones found, laptop charging, and the phone hotspot ready as backup on the French data plan.
• Sit near the router, and close other devices that are streaming or backing up and eating the bandwidth.
• Have both the video link and a phone dial-in number open, so a flaky connection has a fallback.
• Water and a notepad within reach.

21:30 here, 14:30 in Chicago. Sunset is 21:59, so while you work, Rachel takes the blue hour — the Port Briac cove below the house, or the terrace — and the day closes gently for at least one of you.

Seventy-metre cliffs of pink sandstone under heather and gorse, two lighthouses, and seabird colonies screaming off the La Fauconnière rocks. Park at the cap (small summer fee) and take the headland in first, before the walk.

Bring the windbreakers — the wind is real here even in full sun.

The GR34 from Cap Fréhel to Fort La Latte — about 4.5 km, an hour and a bit each way, cliff-edge the whole time, the fortress revealing itself on its sea-stack for the last kilometre. The best coastal approach in northern Brittany, and the one real walk of the week.

Practical

• Flat-ish but rough underfoot in places; proper shoes, and the wind again.
• Water and a layer; there's no shade and no shop until the fort.
• Shortcut if legs vote no: drive the five minutes between the two car parks and walk only the final 1.2 km to the gate.
• Photo: the postcard is made about 800 m out, where the fort clears the gorse.

Fine at a stroll — this is for the beauty, not the mileage. Turn back whenever you like; the best of it comes early.

Eat anywhere along the path with the fort in view, or use the picnic tables near the fort car park if you'd rather have your legs under you. This is the boulangerie haul from this morning.

A 14th-century castle rebuilt as a Vauban-era coastal battery, on its own sea-stack: two drawbridges over natural crevasses, a keep, and a furnace for heating cannonballs red-hot. Kirk Douglas fought the final duel of The Vikings on that keep in 1958.

• Tickets on site only, ~€8.50; allow 60–90 minutes. Open through the evening in July.
• Free parking lot 600 m from the gate.
• Climb to the keep for the view back along the cliffs you just walked.

The same 4.5 km in reverse, and it reads completely differently with the light turned around behind you. About an hour and a quarter. If the outbound walk was enough, this is the leg to shortcut by car.

The GR34 from your door past Port Mer to the Pointe du Grouin and back — about ninety minutes round trip, or drive up and just loop the headland in twenty. This is the second planned sunset.

Evening light on the Île des Landes bird reserve and the whole bay from Granville to the Mont. It was always going to be the closing image of Brittany, and it was always going to be from here. Skip it without guilt if the cliffs already did the job.

One Michelin star, up above the crêperie on quai Thomas: chef Raphaël Fumio Kudaka's Japanese-Breton tasting menu (~€135), the bay in the window, a sake list Mark should let them drive.

• Book now, confirm Thursday service, and flag the pregnancy when you book — the menu is fish-forward and they'll plan the adapted courses in advance.
• Smart-casual dress.
• The cheaper, still-excellent swap if you'd rather: Le Querrien across the quay.

They adapt the raw courses without fuss; the tea and juice accompaniments handle the no-alcohol side gracefully.

You leave a day before the formal checkout — Mathilde & Nabil already know, and it's on the checklist. Follow their key and bin instructions and leave the place kindly.

Final sweep

• Chargers from every socket, passports, the spice tins and soap, anything in the fridge worth taking.
• Load the car and weigh the bags in your head now — Volotea's allowance is strict and enforced, and you'll formally weigh them at the hotel tonight.

A Plus Beaux Villages member and the answer to "is there anything that beats Dinan" — not bigger, just more concentrated: granite and half-timber drowning in geraniums, a castle gate, gallery windows, all walkable in an hour. Park below the village and walk up.

Lunch

• A crêperie or bistro on the main street at the noon opening — walk-ins land fine at 12:00 sharp and badly by 12:45 in July.
• The small Naïa fantasy-art museum is there if it amuses you; skipping it is also correct.

Oceania Nantes Aéroport is the sane choice — directly opposite the terminal, walkable with bags, restaurant on site. The ibis budget Nantes Aéroport is the cheaper fallback. Confirm the current walk or shuttle arrangement when you book.

Do tonight, not at 5 a.m.

• Weigh the bags properly. Check what your Volotea (V7) fare includes for cabin versus hold, and buy any extra allowance online now — airport-counter rates are punitive.
• Repack so the cabin bag meets the size limit and liquids are sorted for security.

Tomorrow's flight is 07:35, so you'll want to be in the terminal by 05:45, which means a 5 a.m. alarm.

• Sane: dinner at the hotel, early night. Nobody has ever regretted this version at the alarm.
• Fun, if the energy is genuinely there: a 20-minute taxi into central Nantes for dinner near Les Machines de l'Île — the workshop where a four-storey mechanical elephant walks — and back by 21:30.