St. Malo/Mont St. Michel Among Other Things...

February 8- February 12

Hello again,

I would like to start of this post by saying I finally tried a French food I did not like, Les Coquilles Saint- Jacques. Yes, it is sea food, it is a scallop like crustacean that I did not really care for. Anyways, my host mom was so sweet about it, she offered to make me something else but I declined the offer and just ate some of the yummy rice dish thing she made me. Thursday, February 10, I went out with a bunch of French students that some of my IES friends had met at conversation club, it was an awesome night and I had a lot of fun and made some new French amis. Now onto the main attraction...

Saint Malo

Saturday February 12, I woke up at 6:15 am so I could eat some breakfast before heading of to IES to hop on a bus for 2 hours for a day trip to northern Brittany. Our first stop was the town of Saint Malo a port city  on the English Channel. What makes it particularly awesome is that there is a huge wall around the whole city. It was founded in the middle ages and is basically just badass. 

For the first part of our journey, we walked around the entire wall that circumvents the city. It was beautiful and an interesting combination of modern and ancient architecture. The modern being the creepy carnival outside the giant wall, the ancient being well, just about everything else. My favorite part of this little town was the fact that I saw little optis sailing out on the ocean. Also, they have this awesome swimming pool they built into the beach so that during the summer people could swim in it and jump off the little platform diving board they created. 

swimming pool

Optis!

All of us ladies ate lunch at this delicious little creperie in the town of Saint Malo. We each got a little green salad, a complet (egg, cheese, and ham) and then we each got different dessert crepes. Chocolate and banana, sugar and butter, and caramel. Mallory and I also got little glasses of vin chaud (hot wine) to try. It smelled like it had spices in it but then ended up being warm sangria...it was delicious!

Mont Saint Michel

After getting back on the bus, we drove a hour east to Mont Saint Michel where I saw one of the coolest looking abbeys I have ever seen. The abbey is basically built on a rock which is actually a tidal island that is connected to the mainland by a causeway that is exposed at low tide but not high tide. Clearly, we were there at low tide otherwise we would not have been able to get on or off the island. The abbey on Mont Saint Michel was built in 708 but the island had been fought over since the 6th and 7th centuries, aka the Romans and their friends. Then England tried to take it from France in the 100 years war but failed because, lets face it, it would be pretty hard to capture this place. Due to the Reformation and French Revolution, most of the monks fled the abbey and it actually became a prison to hold those who opposed the republican regime. Now it is a tourist attraction but still has nuns and stuff. There are no elevators so you have to walk up a lot of steps to get to the actually abbey. 

After the treck to the top, there is the most amazing few of the sea. The church itself is pretty cool because it is so old and you have to wonder how they managed to put the whole thing together without modern construction machinery. One of the coolest, most entertaining aspects of the mont was that we got to walk on the beach since it was low tide. If you walk about 75 yards out onto the sand bar, you quickly realize that the sand is actually quicksand. To be fair the quicksand was more like slow sand because you had to jump on it a lot to actually get it to suck you down but it was still cool. We must have played in the quicksand for hours, these two young french boys rolled up their pants and actually let themselves sink down to their knees. It was a little unnerving but awesome.  We headed back to Nantes around 5:30 but didn't get to the city until like 8. Overall it was an amazing but tiring day. Here are some more pictures from my trip to Saint Malo and Mont Saint Michel, I hope you enjoy them. Au revoir, Vous me manquez.

KSG