Come Wind, Come Rain

Back in the fall, Denise and Jean-Paul asked me if I had been to Mont St. Michel yet, and when I said I hadn’t, they told me they’d find a weekend when they could take me. It was incredibly nice of them to offer, and this past weekend they came through on it and told me to bring a friend. So, for once, I actually had something to do when Sunday came around (Sundays are super boring in France--nothing is open).

We picked Lauren up in town and then headed off to Mont St. Michel, which is about an hour away. It’s technically in Normandy, but it’s right on the border between Normandy and Brittany, so both regions like to claim it. The day, though rather windy, was quite gorgeous (an increasingly rare occasion in Brittany—we had a solid week of rain last week). Originally, Mont St. Michel was an island at high tide, and then when the tide went out, a land strip connecting it to the mainland would emerge. At the end of the 1900s that land strip was built up, so that now you can always access it by land. However, you could see some people making the trek across to the island in knee-deep water from other points along the mainland. They’re currently doing complicated engineering stuff with the water and sand to make it an island again within the next decade or so (for a more adept understanding of what they’re doing, go ask Klare, my college roommate—she no doubt actually understands it).

Anyway, we wandered around the town. It felt a lot like Carcassonne to me—super tiny streets and really touristy. The best part was really just the views, both of the Mont and of the surrounding area. The Abbey for which the islandything was named (I can’t decide what to call it—it’s not a city, it’s not an island…I guess I could go with peninsula) is built into the rocks on the high part, which is really striking. We didn’t go into the Abbey (9€? No, thank you), but just walking around it you could see gorgeous views. We ate a picnic lunch in a small park area, and then meandered our way out.

After the Mont, instead of driving straight back to Rennes, we drove along the coastline to St. Malo, and then from St. Malo we drove south to Rennes. We drove through Cancale, and we also stopped at Pointe de Grouin and walked along the coastline there. Right after we hopped back in the car after that little excursion, it started to pour. Welcome to Bretagne. We looked at a few other views from the car, but no one was courageous enough to get out of the car and brave the storm, so we then headed back to Rennes.

This past week has been the first of a two week break (it’s typically called the February vacation, but ours fell in March this year). It’s been a rather boring week, but it has allowed me to finally get caught up on the blog and go running a lot. On Monday I head off to Brussels, so I’ll be back in a week or so with updates about that. Happy March—the daffodils here have already bloomed!