Mont St. Michel et Normandie

Saturday, at the extremely early hour of 7 am, we departed on a "pimpin'" charter bus to Mont St. Michel. I was very tired and wanted to sleep but even though we each got a "row" of 2 seats to ourselves, I was uncomfortable and slept for maybe 30 or 45 mins out of the 4 hour ride. The French countryside looks not too much different than rural America, although the houses/farms are way older. It was amazing to see Mont St. Michel in the distance, it looked surreal (you will see in the photos). For those who don't know, Mont St. Michel is a "town" that is basically an island containing the abbey (church?) that was built to worship the archangel Michel. Monks have lived there for hundreds of years and I think it was built in the middle ages. Not only is there the church area but there's also a "street" that winds up to the top of the mount that has restaurants/stores with cheap crap. The mount is surrounded by the English channel (I think) but the tide is very low during the day. After a certain hour, the parking lot gets washed away as the tide comes in. It's very strange. There's a lot of quicksand that we were warned not to step in (who tries that?). We embarked on this voyage with the other ISA group that studies at the Sorbonne, and we learned that they are the most obnoxious group of people ever. There are maybe 2 of the whole group that are worth talking to, they are all very high school and immature. I really lucked out that my group is very cool and normal. Anyway, we went on a guided tour of the abbey, there were a lot of stairs involved, and many different rooms that all had stories. Apparently there are still about 7 or so monks living in the abbey but they are tucked away somewhere where the tourists can't see them.

After we left the Mont, Gabriel (program director) said he had a surprise for us as we rolled up to a COOKIE FACTORY. At this factory, there is no factory tour, but right when you walk in, you are encouraged to take as many cookies as you can for free. They are mostly in a tart style, I chose strawberry and chocolate, they were delicious. Gabriel comes out of the store with a cart full of boxes. We thought maybe he just really liked the cookies and wanted to bring some back, but it turns out he bought us each a cute cow tin full of cookies. That was amazing. From there, we drove about 1-2 hours to Caen (pronounced "cah" not "caaah" like Cannes where the film festival is), where we stayed overnight. About 16 of us went to a restaurant across the street from the hotel where we had a great meal, lots of wine, and the waiter poured shots in everyone's mouths towards the end. I had lost my voice at this point due to the cough, but it was still fun even though I had to shout over the music to talk to people. I chose the pot au feu which is an individual pot of stew with huge vegetables and tender steak. For dessert I had a crepe with chocolate, whipped cream, and a mystery nut. After that, we went to an Irish pub a few doors down and had some beer. It's annoying to me that since everything is so expensive here, it's the most reasonable for me to drink beer when we're at the bar (we usually split pitchers), but I don't really like it.

The next morning, I woke up extra early to hit the continental breakfast buffet (because I love free breakfast). I was pleased to find croissants and bread/butter/jam, and tea. Since we were going to a museum where lunch would be expensive, I made a sandwich out of bread and some ham that was in the buffet (strange) to take with me. It worked out perfectly, I was very proud. The drive to Normandy wasn't very far, we arrived at the museum pretty quickly. The museum was very well put together, but also very sad. They had letters written from both French and American soldiers to their families, along with various other items from WWII. Being the history nut I am, I was ecstatic to be AT the actual PLACE where the battles happened. Most of the exhibits explained things in French, English, and German. We then viewed a film that had no words, but used actual footage from D-Day to explain what happened. I don't think I'll ever forget how intense it was to see all of the ships, planes, and parachuters storm the beach. It was extremely interesting and moving and made one feel a bit patriotic. From the museum, we ventured on to the American Cemetery and Omaha beach. The memorial was very nice and it was cool to be there since I've seen so many pictures of it. We walked down to the beach and imagined how crazy it is that such a normal looking beach has so much history behind it. I took millions of pictures as you can see in my album. All in all, my weekend was fabulous, but it's good to be back "home" in Paris. The link for the pictures is in one of the posts below.