Mont-Saint-Michel

Already I can check off two of the places I most wanted to visit in France--Chenonceau and the famous Mont-Saint-Michel (although they are only two of about 100 places that I desperately want to see in France alone, so it's probably quite good that I'm getting a sprinting start).

Last Saturday (August 10th) was the big trip to Mont-Saint-Michel, and I was extremely excited for it. I woke up with the sunrise and walked to the bus with my two host sisters for our early departure.

Just over three hours later, we were in Normandy, walking towards the island fortress.

In reality, Mont-Saint-Michel was built as a holy place (there is a huge abbey and crypts and halls of prayer at the top of the small island wonder). After walking up the sloping streets full of postcard shops and ice cream stands, we arrived at the top to tour the abbey. My friends and I really just wandered around by ourselves to take photos, though.

Favorite picture of Mont-Saint-Michel

After exploring the crypts, we had only an hour left before we had to meet back at the bus. Kat and I used that time to take a walk past the shuttle stations to get a few far-off shots of Mont-Saint-Michel.  

While leaving the Mont to get to St. Malo, our bus hit traffic (ugh) so we only had an hour and 15 minutes to discover the beautiful beach city. We walked along the beach for a bit before sitting down for a fast dinner (ham and cheese galettes followed by caramel-banana sugar crêpes--delicious!).

St. Malo!

Unfortunately, the dinner left us with only 10 minutes to buy caramels and cidre (hard apple cider, a specialty of Bretagne). My friends and I raced to find the sweets and the cidre, then ran back to the bus (where we discovered that being a few minutes late was completely worth it: the caramels are the absolute best that I've ever tasted, and the cidre was so sweet, it was like apple juice!).

Our group of 12 Holy Cross kids had the back seats of our bus. Many of the girls in our group had their own bottle of wine for the three-and-a-half hour bus ride back to Tours; Bridget, Julianne, Kat, and I split two bottles of cidre. When Bridget was opening one of the bottles, the cork flew out and hit the window with such a loud noise that half of the other students on the bus turned around, and someone even asked "Who's popping champagne?"

I'm so glad that we had the opportunity to see Mont-Saint-Michel: it was one of my top sights to see this year!

The rest of this week has flown by, though: Sunday was a sunny, lazy day where I went to a local  park with my Swiss host sister to lay in the grass and read.

Tuesday was notable since, after class, Julianne, Christian, Bridget, and I took a tour of the Saint Gatien Cathedral in Tours (only about a 10 minute walk from the institute). The little old man who leads all the tours (even the one to Mont-Saint-Michel) is so passionate about history, and it was really quite hilarious to watch him energetically explain with erratic hand motions his frustration as to why the first two columns in the cathedral were so carelessly and ineloquently crafted back in the 13th century. One thing that I had not bargained for was that the tour of the Cathedral lasted for two full hours. I definitely learned a lot, and the cathedral itself is absolutely gorgeous, but two hours of listening to the little man enthusiastically lecturing (in French, of course) every detail pertaining to the columns and stained glass windows was a little exhausting.   

The Cathedral, whose towers stand nearly 300 feet high

Yesterday was a holiday in France, so classes were cancelled and most of the 12 Holy Cross kids took an unexpected trip to Blois (since about 6 of our other plans fell through--why do all the cheap buses not run on holidays??), but I will have to save that story for my next post.

For now, though, c'est tout!