Saint-Malo and Dinan

The morning of our day trip out to Bretagne (when we visited Mont Saint-Michel) began in the coastal town of St. Malo.

We were really happy to get to ride the TGV, France's high-speed train, which made the trip a lot shorter! Seb has loved the TGV (from afar) for many years now. And let's just take a moment to be grateful for the fact that the trains were running and no one was on strike! I was fully expecting to run into some sort of strike while we were in France, and we didn't (but I heard from a friend that right now, the train workers ARE on strike—for the next three months! So we wouldn't have been able to take the TGV at all, and we wouldn't have made it to Mont Saint-Michel! *shudder*), so hooray for that!

Seb pointed out landmarks of interest to Ziggy

But Zig preferred to do THIS for most of the time (when he wasn't nursing).

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Mont Saint-Michel

I think I have always wanted to visit Mont Saint-Michel. But I'm not sure why or how I even know about it. Maybe I had seen a movie filmed there? (I thought it might have been Twelfth Night, but it doesn't seem to be.) Or maybe my brother had been there? There's a St. Michael's Mount in Cornwall too, which adds to the confusion, but—at any rate—I've been dreaming about going to Mont Saint-Michel for years now.

The trouble was, I was afraid it was too far from Paris. I read that we could ride the TGV (which Sebastian had always been dying to do anyway—especially since Malachi got to ride the ICE!) instead of taking a lengthy coach tour, but then it looked like we'd have to catch a bus or another regional train and that sounded like more complication than I dared attempt with a baby. Finally when I was ready to give up on it, I found this little tour company that would pick us up from the train station and drive us around in a minivan! That didn't sound too daunting, so I signed us up. And I was excited that the tour included two other towns in Bretagne that I hadn't heard of, but that looked really cool when I looked them up: Dinan and St. Malo. (The post about those towns is here.)

We drove toward Mont Saint-Michel on the back roads, and it was so peaceful and serene, I couldn't believe it when our guide told us that this was the third biggest tourist attraction in France, after the Eiffel Tower and the Louvre. 

It was a greyish and misty day. In the morning it had even been snowy, quite rare for this part of France, and when we got out of the shuttle bus that drives you across the bridge (private cars can't drive across), it was SO COLD. I think it might be the coldest I have EVER BEEN. I guess I should qualify that because I have been colder when I have to stay out in the cold for a long time (like in Moscow) or when I've been cold and wet…and this was better, because as soon as we were off the bridge and on the island itself, the wind wasn't so bitter, and the buildings blocked the cold air. But for those few minutes as we walked, I thought I might freeze into a big block of ice and they'd have to break Ziggy off of me with a pick-ax.

There used to be a causeway out the island and you could only cross at low tide. But now they've built a bridge (and a dam, which is somehow filtering out silt so it won't accumulate on the island and make it sink...our guide explained it to us but I'm not sure I grasped the details. Although Seb seemed to get everything she was saying, so I can't blame her English!). It's nice not to have to plan your visit around the tides! Although I would have liked to stay overnight in the area so I could watch the water go in and out. (I find myself very fascinated with tides since staying at this house, and the Bay of Mont Saint-Michel is an especially spectacular place to see them!)

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