Date:3/4/2022-3/14/2022
Destination: France
Goal: Normandy, Brittany, and Paris Culture
Distance: 4089 Miles
Means of Travel: Flying
Potential Credits: 0
Jour 4- Look At Those Beautiful Buttresses!
I didn't sleep well that night and woke up late, and only had half a croissant for breakfast as a result, but that didn't matter. I was so excited to get on the road and do the thing I looked forward to most on this trip: Le Mont St. Michel!
A wonder of medieval architecture and France's second most-visited tourist site, Mont St. Michel is a monastery built on a huge rock formation jumping out of a tidal shoreline, one that becomes an island at high tide. My sister had work to do remotely so she stayed behind to do that (she's done this part of the trip before and wasn't missing out on anything new) while mom, dad, grandma and I loaded up the car and hit the road!
I woke up pretty late due to not sleeping well the night before so breakfast was a petit pain au chocolate that I basically had to inhale to not hold everyone up, so I didn't have as much to eat as I maybe should have and I got pretty hungry pretty fast into the drive. We passed a McDonald's but I said I was fine, a mistake because that was basically the last bit of civilization before arriving at Mont St. Michel.
Mont St. Michel is an international destination, the second most visited site in France, but there's hardly any infrastructure to get there. Most of the roads we took were narrow country roads through very rural farmland, same roadside stands selling apples and cidre and calvados that were all over the D-Day towns, no interstate or Mont St. Michel byway or nothing. You drive through no man's land, the type of terrain back at home that would be dotted with Trump and conspiracy garbage, and then out of the blue pops this absolute marvel of medieval architecture. It's weird. Cahokia Mounds in a suburb of St. Louis, the ancient ruins of a large Native American city, is a fascinating UNESCO World Heritage Site that just happens to be chilling off the highway in a redneck Southern Illinois shithole cow town, this has the exact same feel of a world wonder just kind of plonked in the middle of nothing noteworthy at all.
My grandmother informed us on the drive that we were going to be leaving Normandy and entering Bretagne, known to anglophones as Brittany, for this leg of the trip. A bit further south and left virtually untouched by the war, I was told to expect different architecture, slightly different food (notably pastries), and other minor cultural differences. Mont St. Michel was all over Normandy's gift shops so I just assumed it was part of it, but it actually marks the border between the two, and I believe it's officially part of Brittany at the moment.
Eventually you get to this parking lot, planted and separated into strips like the one at Pointe du Hoc, and get in line for a bus. There's a large causeway running out to Mont St. Michel, and you can walk it or pay for a more authentic horse and buggy, but these are free and they're quick. There's a little town thing that you pass on the way out there with a few hotels and restaurants and a tidal energy plant (I think this is where my family stayed on the 2015 trip I wasn't part of) but for the most part it's just untamed countryside.
After stumbling around a packed bus with my camera, we pulled up at the base of the rock and got off. My most anticipated part of the trip was just around the corner!
The biggest thing I got wrong about Mont St. Michel from photos was that it's not just "on the beach." Like this expanse of sandy tidal land is huge, shame we couldn't see it at high tide surrounded by water.
Mont St. Michel was built around 1000 AD as an abbey atop this large rock formation jutting out of the sands, and a small town sort of grew around it. A street sort of winds its way to the top, with shops and restaurants towards the bottom, and staircases exist to connect concentric rings of street without the need to walk all the way around the spiral.
Stepping into Mont St. Michel is like stepping back in time. I've seen stuff in the amusement industry meant to mimic this sort of architecture, but this wasn't some work of Disney magic, concrete, and fiberglass. This was a real medieval town built with hand-hewn bricks and timbers. Of course, as with everything historic in France, it's been modernized with plumbing and electricity and climate control, but to me that's even more amazing that they could do that and still have it preserved this nicely. The place is pretty touristy, as one would expect for an international destination, but it still had some rural France charm that still makes it feel like somewhat of a hidden gem.
Though the medieval tavern-looking brasseries with roaring fires and wooden tables did look cool, we opted for a more modern restaurant with a panoramic view of the surrounding area. I wanted to try the sweeter cidre so we got a bottle of that for the table.
While we waited for our food, I stepped out and got photos of the view.
Because France, lunch was three courses. I started off with terrine and finished with chocolate mousse, but the part of this meal that really jumped out at me was the main course: moules frites! Mussels were one of those things I loved growing up when I went to France but learned to hate because American mussels are different and they suck, so I wasn't sure I'd still like the French ones after all these years. Well, not only did I like them, but I ate them all and even drank the juice in the bottom of the bowl. This lunch was beyond delicious and I'm so glad I gave them another whirl!
After lunch, we headed up to see the cathedral at village level. A work of earlier medieval Romanesque architecture, this place was characterized by the rounded windows and curved, vaulted ceiling. Probably the thing that stood in my mind the most about this was this badass statue of St. Michel, for who the cloister is named, slaying the dragon as per his legend. A lot of the pews were roped off due to COVID regulations still in play, but you could still throw a mask on and go in and check it out.
Jesus has seen my memes, so I have no idea how I stepped inside a church and didn't burst into flames.
Heading out the back we got to the graveyard, beautiful and located in the shadow of the monastery.
This was probably the best place to shoot the actual abbey that wasn't off the island.
Afterwards we went to the gift shop and I wasted no time just loading up. Mont St. Michel cheese board? Check! Cool retro 80s travel poster? Check! T-shirt with the knight and dragon to wear to Dungeons & Dragons night? Check! I'd have gotten more if I had more bag space and I'm not sorry! And I can't wait to have guests over to bust out the charcuterie board with the island on it! I wanted everything I could get my hands on to remember this experience.
I was ready to press on and climb that winding, steep road up to the abbey, but my family looked at me like I was crazy and told me that there's not much else to see past what we had done and said it's a good several hours walk for not a lot, so I just kind of shrugged it off and followed them back to the bus.
What a criminally underrated experience! To get to visit something that's that old, something I had heard about in French class, built a 3D puzzle of, seen and even printed photos of my family visiting, this was a major sleeper on my bucket list but I'm so glad I finally knocked it out. Everybody who visits France should visit Mont St. Michel. I know, people go for Paris and the Eiffel Tower and to crowd around an 18x12 painting of some random woman, and there's nothing at all wrong with that, but the rest of France has plenty worth checking out, and this is part of it. While this is supposed to be second only to Eiffel Tower so it's to be understood that it's impressive, it makes me wonder what other wonders are hiding in Alsace, Basque, Corsica, and other parts of France that I've not even thought to visit.
With that out of the way, we got on the road for another beautiful drive for another 45 minutes to the other thing we wanted to do in Bretagne: a city called Dinan. Brittany was hardly touched by World War II, in stark contrast to the destruction in Normandy, and while Normandy's buildings were 300 years old and it was perfectly normal, Brittany had structures that were even older still fully in service, having been upgraded and modernized over the centuries. Before we left, my renaissance festival enthusiast sister told me, "you'll love it, it's like RenFest: The Town."
While not even remotely comparable in size, pulling into Dinan felt like Diet Paris. Tightly packed apartments 3-5 floors high towered over ageless cobblestone streets , some of which were so narrow we weren't fully sure if they were intended for cars or not, and several streets in town weren't. We parked our car on this town square thing and headed down an alley to our hotel, which we learned was intended for us to drive into. We went inside, were given the code to get in after hours, and carried our shit up to our rooms.
Oh yeah. The hotel was haunted. I mean, nothing happened, but it's already old as dirt, and in France they leave the lights out in common areas like hallways and elevator landings, and you press a timed switch to activate the light. So you get out of the elevator in near darkness with only the switches ominously flashing. I kept rounding the corner and expecting the little girls from The Shining to be waiting for me.
My room actually had a really nice view out the window. The naked lady poster on the wall, while not explicitly showing any ninnies or turkums, made me uncomfortable, but nothing covering it with a towel couldn't fix.
Once all checked in and ready to roll, we met in my grandmother's room and went out for a stroll. Let's explore Dinan!
Dinan is the perfect illustration of France's ability to blend old and traditional with modern and relevant. My first clue should've been the brat kids Naruto running around and climbing on what appeared to be a medieval relic of a saint missing a head. The shops are modern, there's 2022 people walking the cobblestone streets, but you look up and some of the stuff dates back to the middle ages. So RenFest the town? Not quite. More like medievalpunk? I think it's called castlepunk? Is that even a thing?
We checked out a few shops. There was a stinky cheese place that I could literally smell through the glass storefront window, an expensive liquor place with a big beautiful serrano ham on display (this is where you start to see a bit of Spanish influence creep in, probably the biggest difference I saw between Brittany and Normandy), a bookstore, and this chocolate shop. In the corner, I noticed this naughty little bunny, pointed to it, and asked why straight people found shit like this funny. My mom rolled her eyes and brushed it off, telling me it's holding a carrot...but then dad sees it and starts laughing. I mean, the mixture of cute and cuddly with violent and/or vulgar was always funny to me, so I got a bit of a laugh out of it, but I'm sorry, this bunny holds a penis for the sake of holding a penis.
For the love of god, why are allos like this?
And speaking of god, there was another cathedral, so we went in to check it out!
This one was larger than the Romanesque-styled Mont St. Michel one, something that I would credit to the fact that this one was built later, in the Gothic style. Those pillars with the angled beams connecting them to the walls are called flying buttresses, we learned about these when I took Western Civ in college. They essentially serve the function of having a person push on a large sheet of plywood from the top, keeping it from tipping over. This allows for higher ceilings and tall, pointed windows.
The art at the Dinan one photographed well but wasn't as impressive as the art inside the Mont St. Michel one. Some cool things here, though, such as one of those cages they use to swing around burning incense.
After my dad made a comment about the very large organ on display in the church, even larger than the one the bunny was holding, we left.
Nerd store! I saw the Pokeball and had to go inside! Sadly it was almost all Funko Pops, which are cute and all but a financial rabbit hole I want no part of.
To conclude our walking about Dinan sesh, we popped into this cafe across the corner from the hotel for aparatif (a sorta-course-but-not-really in French culture that's basically pregaming but fancier). The toilet was an extra charge to use so I held it, drank my beer...and a dog came over so I pet him. Dogs are way more welcome in France than they are in the US, there were two dogs under the table at the Mont St. Michel lunch, but unlike in the states, people don't go around petting other peoples' dogs here. Which was brutal for someone like me who wants to pet all the puppers.
We went back to our rooms to freshen up a bit before dinner, when I unpacked I had to get a picture of Chuey in France! My partner Beth got me him as a gift because his little personality tag said he was a traveler and it made her think of me, and I wanted to bring one of her stuffed animals along to have something to remind me of her while I was running around France.
After getting back to the room, I attempted to use the shower, which was a shower head over a bathtub (which is fine) but with a hinged pane of glass covering half the tub length and no proper curtain...and no bath mat and I nearly slipped and fell getting out! I changed into the business casual getup I brought for nicer venues out here, and it was time! I was ready to take on dinner!
We went to the same restaurant the family picked the last time they came, notable for my grandfather accidentally shit talking the waitress in French instead of English. Apparently she had really bad resting bitch face and when she walked away, my grandfather muttered, "sal gueule," French for "dirty face" or "dirty mouth." It was an inside joke in the family ever since, so it only made sense to toast the dinner to sal guele in his honor.
As much as I was loving all the Normand cidre and calvados, Alsacian German-styled sweet wines, and Belgian beers...I was just realizing I hadn't seen a single mixed drink since we left the continent! Fortunately they had this mojito on the drink menu, which wasn't very sweet (the French really don't do a lot of sweet things) but was still delicious.
Again, three courses to a meal, I started off with some soup du poisson; a French fish soup. I don't fully understand what it is, furthermore there's nothing in American cuisine that tastes even remotely like it, it's sort of fishy but a good fishy, but I like it. Served with cheese, croutons, and this orange stuff called rust which I also don't fully know what it is.
Main course? Salmon with chorizo and cream served with this lovely yellow saffron rice, and man oh man this stuff was good! The sauce was a sort of béchamel with diced bits of chorizo in it, the first bit of Spanish influence creeping into French food that you don't see in Normandy. And the rice was delicious as well, the flaky salmon and delicate rice patty kind of fell apart in the sauce, leaving a delicious mishmosh to pick up with my fork.
And to close out the meal? A Nutella crepe like I had been looking for! Crepes here are about as good as any good, properly made crepe you can get back at home, hell Kings Island even has something like it for Grand Carnivale. But this was absolutely delicious, as to be expected. My "can I marry this crepe?" comment was also met with "are you cheating on Beth?" which was funny.
Afterwards we walked back to the hotel and I got changed into my pajamas and hit the sack.
Jour 5- Did you just assume my sauce!?
I woke up a little on the later side but still had time to pop downstairs for hotel breakfast. A fair bit better than American hotel breakfast, we had offerings such as serrano ham, croissants, honey (which I was noticing was a thing all over Brittany), and crepes. I wasted no time folding my ham into my crepe and dipping my croissant into the honey, and man was it good! After that, we got ready to check out and met downstairs to go to Dinan's marche.
More fresh caught fish on ice, nothing to see here.
Je suis un ananas. Un petit ananas. Those who do not get the reference will be sent to the guillotine.
If you're going to go to one of these, Dinan's was my favorite on the trip. I did have this guy who was super super pushy with me to buy a bag I didn't need (pro tip: get one of these and just try to haggle it down to something ridiculously low that he won't accept), but I did get this really nice hat.
I got this tandoori chicken wrap that was absolutely delicious, but I accidentally offended the chef ordering it! I asked for no lettuce, typical for me, so he goes and grabs a large yellow squirt bottle. But when I told him "pas du moutard," he got super offended and told me, "It's cheese sauce! Don't tell me not to put it on if you don't even know what it is!" He held up the red bottle usually associated with ketchup, "this is barbecue sauce, do you want it or not!?" Wrap was delicious, but I walked away without looking the guy in the eye because I felt so bad.
So we checked out of the room and dad managed to back the car out of the parking lot past like seven obstacles, and we made the two hour drive back to Normandy. Not wanting to mess around with food after getting back, mom ordered some pizzas from the little brasserie at St. Vaast's marina. Here I have quite a delicious carbonara pizza...but for some reason France doesn't believe in pizza cutters. You get an uncut pie every time you order a pizza here.
Since we just spent two days running around, we had kind of an easy evening, but I did go for a walk with the four of us to grab a beer at the marina, so I threw my fancy new hat on and went out. Afterwards I walked up to Goesselin to get some chocolates, and poked around a few of the stores.
Snagged some BN cookies, a favorite of mine since childhood, for a snack. Why don't we have these back at home!?
Again, taking it easy, I spent some of the evening on my Switch. Not a bad view for Breath of the Wild!
Having acquired so much in terms of souvenirs, I have this tradition of packing an empty bag and checking it home. But the little Cancun tote bag I usually use for that was running out of room, so Dad and I went to the store to get a bigger bag. I couldn't help but have a laugh at the wine aisle in France having a fucking book like the windshield wipers back at home do.
Dinner was a few courses, largely focused on basically emptying shit out of the fridge before it went bad. But the most interesting thing we had tonight were this little puff pastry croquette things stuffed with a sort of creamy veal thalamus gland filling.
So anybody who knows my ace ass knows I fucking HATE bodily fluids. Mucus, sexual fluids, piss, diarrhea, puke (though this one is oddly hilarious to me), are all horrible, but one of the worst in my opinion is blood. So naturally...we get some blood sausage, which is a sausage made from sheep's blood that's been boiled and reduced down to a paste. It's a lot squishier than a "normal" sausage like a bratwurst, so the consistency already bothered me, but I decided to give it a go in the spirit of doing this trip regret-free. Honestly, the flavor was irony, not too bad, but I mentally couldn't get past it being something that I'm that averse to.
Dessert was this cake sampler from the patisserie, which was absolutely delicious as usual.
After some calvados, we hit the hay. Only one day left in St. Vaast!
Jour 6- Harbor's Closed, Mousse At The Front Should've Told You
Anybody who has ever traveled with me knows how I get. All those years of pushing myself to get more and more coasters out of a season has given me this drive to not stay in one place too long while I'm traveling. I gotta keep moving around, gotta keep seeing more, but today...we were still in St. Vaast. And all of next morning. And I was getting stir crazy as hell, wanting to get a move on. Not that I didn't enjoy it or think St. Vaast wasn't a lovely place to be, but I had seen it and was ready to move on.
On the agenda today was another maritime town called Barfleur, home to a church, a harbor, and basically the same thing as St. Vaast. I sadly didn't get a chance to shoot it, but driving in is really cool seeing the church rise up over the harbor, which isn't gated unlike St. Vaast's.
Oh yeah. St. Vaast's harbor is gated. Remember that...
We wanted to go inside the church and explore, but it was the first of two things closed today.
The graveyard was really cool though.
Lunch was a waterfront brasserie, one that was really cold and filled up really fast. I enjoyed a Leffe with scallops, but there's a twist! I was today years old when I learned that scallops have a second part to them that's almost as big as the soft white puck thing that's also perfectly edible, it's like an orange crescent that goes around the white round part. The taste is slightly different and it's slightly softer and mushier, but if you eat both parts together it tastes exactly like a good scallop should with no noticeable difference. The French remind me of Native Americans in the way that they don't let a lot of the animal go to waste when it comes to seafood. No matter how squishy, fishy, or orange it is, they'll eat it.
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And for dessert? Apple ice cream topped with a generous pour of calvados, sort of mixing the sweetness of the apple with its depth of flavor. And the impulse is to either go right for the brain freeze or drink the calvados, but the best way to eat this is to let the ice cream get a little melty and mix the two together.
Heading out, we made a tiny detour to La Panoramique, a restaurant on top of a hill with an amazing view of the Normandy coast. Restaurant was closed, at least I got some good shots out of it. This hilltop view is amazing! You can see the four states that border Normandy: Ohio, Nevada, Maine and Kentucky!
After getting back, I did a bit of packing for the next day before I was invited to go grab a drink with the family at the marina. The marina is just across the water from our side of the harbor, and when the tide gate is closed, you can walk across it as a closed loop. Well we get there, and for some reason the gate is still open because the tide isn't going out yet, despite the schedule saying it would be closed. So that left us to walk all the way around the harbor to get to the marina! Fortunately it was a pleasant walk until it began to rain on the way back.
There was even a rainbow.
After getting back, I changed out of my rain-soaked clothes into my business casual for the final dinner on this leg of the trip, and man were we leaving St. Vaast with a bang! We went to this fine French restaurant called Fuscia, with a garden motif.
Aparatif for me was my first ever time trying a wine I was constantly recommended: gewürztraminer! This German wine came from German-influenced Alsace and man was it good! Nice, sweet, and crisp with a strong depth of flavor.
To start out, we were given this little beet appetizer with a raspberry compote and honestly, I didn't care for it. It tasted like a PB&J with the crushed nuts and earthy flavor of the beet, but it tasted too much like dirt for me and I barely ate half of it. Probably for the best, we had some damn good food coming.
My entree was this cod ceviche with mango that was absolutely delicious. The acidity of the pickled fish contrasted beautifully with the sweetness of the mango, and while it seemed like an odd combination (usually ceviche is all acid in my experience), this was great!
By now, I had noticed something...odd about the serving order. They were jumping around the table, getting my grandma and mom first, then my sister, then my dad, and serving me last, despite the fact that this sent them on a goose chase all around the table. What was the reason for this? Good ol' fashioned boomer trash gender roles! Women old to young, then men old to young. Mom poked fun that I was annoyed waiting an extra few seconds to get my food, but I just told her, "nah, I just think gender roles are trash."
She thought it was "kind of fun," I think it's a triggering reminder of a very problematic social construct that traumatizes people.
After everybody else was served their main dish, I got my steak and potatoes! This dish wouldn't be out of place in a good American steakhouse, but I preferred it to anything I'd had back at home. The potatoes and parsnips were cooked in some kind of oyster foam, which gave them an interesting flavor, and the steak was among the best I'd ever had.
And finally, dessert! There was a pistachio custard and white chocolate mousse to choose from, I went with the latter but most of the table went with the pistachio, and I tasted both and both were delicious.
Dad offered to split with my grandma, she said no, so dad played a game: he would only take a bite if she did, and basically guilted her into splitting with him. The result? A hilarious comic eight frames that could rival Stan Lee's work.
We walked home after and had champagne before hitting the hay. I needed my rest, tomorrow we would be leaving St. Vaast and hopping on a train to Paris to end this trip on a bang!
UP NEXT: We finish this trip swapping the rural coast and countryside of Normandy for the bustling streets of Paris! Iconic sights and experiences such as Parisian dining, the Metro, and of course, the Eiffel Tower bring this trip to a close on the highest note imaginable. Make sure to watch this space for the cool and chaotic conclusion to this trip report!
