Lepod's Blog

Le Mont-Saint-Michel is a rocky tidal island in Normandy. In 708 St Michael the archangel appeared to St Aubert, the bishop of  Avranches, and instructed him to build a church on the islet. Aubert repeatedly ignored the angel’s instruction, until St Michael burned a hole in the bishop’s head with his finger (apparently.)  A shrine was built in the 8th century, and the first church was completed in 1144. By the 13th century, hundreds of Benedictine monks lived there. During the Hundred Years’ War (1337 – 1453) the English made repeated assaults on the island but were unable to seize it, partly because of the abbey’s improved fortifications. Les Michelettes, two wrought-iron bombards left by the English in their failed 1423–24 siege of Mont-Saint-Michel, are still displayed near the outer defense wall. (With thanks to wikipedia for the info.)

It was amazing to me to see something so old, until I reflected that parts of the abbey were a great deal older! The mount and it’s bay were declared a UNESCO world heritage site in 1979.

I’m going to quote more of wikipedia here because it’s so interesting:

Design: William de Volpiano, the Italian architect who had built the Abbey of Fécamp in Normandy, was chosen as building contractor by Richard II of  Normandy in the 11th century. He designed the Romanesque church of the abbey, daringly placing the transept crossing at the top of the mount. Many underground crypts and chapels had to be built to compensate for this weight; these formed the basis for the supportive upward structure that can be seen today. Today Mont-Saint-Michel is seen as a Gothic-style church.

Robert de Thorigny, a great supporter of Henry II of England (who was also Duke of Normandy), reinforced the structure of the buildings and built the main façade of the church in the 12th century. In 1204 the Breton Guy de Thouars, allied to the King of France, undertook the siege of the Mount. After having set fire to the village and having massacred the population, he was obliged to beat a retreat under the powerful walls of the Abbey. Unfortunately, the fire which he himself lit extended to the buildings, and the roofs fell prey to the flames. Horrified by the cruelty and the exactions of his Breton ally, Philip Augustus offered Abbot Jourdain a grant for the construction of a new Gothic-style architectural set which included the addition of the refectory and cloister.
Charles VI is credited with adding major fortifications to the abbey-mount, building towers, successive courtyards and strengthening the ramparts.

(End of wikipedia’s contribution)

We arrived along the causeway to the island about 11 in the morning and were ushered into an enormous car park, parts of which are submerged when the tide comes in so you have to watch the time! The tides apparently can run as fast as a horse, and the islet is also surrounded by quicksand in places, so you have to be careful where you walk. Anyway, we walked to the portal in the outer wall, and entered the town, which has a very narrow street spiraling upwards towards the abbey, surrounded by tourist shops and restaurants and crowded with tourists.

It’s quite good fun though and the buildings themselves are charming. There is a little church halfway up with a cemetary. Apart from the monks in the abby, there are about 50 people living in the town itself. We gradually made our way up the spiral, stopping to look at postcards etc, and to have a sandwich sitting on the steps near the town church. Then we entered the abbey itself, hiring english language electronic guides.  The views from the top were most impressive, although Normandy is very flat as you can see from one of the pictures. Inside the construction consists mainly of romanesque arches on top of massive pillars and  characteristically thick walls, presumably why the structure has lasted such a long time. It was interesting to see the places where monks have lived and slept and cooked and prayed for over 1000 years. It is an exceptional place to visit.

There were certainly a lot of tourists. The monks are all away at the moment, and I can’t blame them. Apparently 3 million people visit the place every year! Presumably it calms down a bit in the winter. Here are some photographs:

In the weekend we drove up to St Malo, stopping at Dinan for lunch.

Dinan is a smallish town on the river Rance.  At it’s center is a walled medieval town with some fine buildings, some as old as 13th century. We had sandwiches, we found some fantastic postcards of classic French cars, a bit of touristing, then it was time to head to St Malo.

St-Malo is a walled port city on the English channel. We stayed in a very nice little hotel called the “hotel de la mer” in Saint-Servan about 10 minutes walk from St-Malo. It was ideal, we could park our car right outside, the people were very friendly and the price was quite reasonable, so I can recommend it.  After a bit of a rest, we walked to St-Malo and in through one of the doors in the wall. The city was 80% destroyed in WWII, half by the germans, the other half by the US. The Malouins decided to rebuild the town exactly as it had been using the original blocks of stone where possible. The reconstruction was only completed in the 1970’s but they did a remarkable job. Here’s a photo:

I hasten to add I got this particular picture from Wikimedia commons. Here’s some of my photos:

Inside the city is quite compact, it was hard to take photos as the buildings are several stories high and close together, blocking the light. There were heaps of tourists, lots of tourist shops, restaurants, a lovely church in the middle where a wedding was taking place, we saw the bride getting out of her limo and entering the church.  Everyone applauded her, tourists and all. Tired of walking, we jumped on le petit train which takes tourists around the streets with a french and english commentary, then we walked back to the hotel to prepare for dinner.

Next door to the hotel was a spanish restaurant so we had tapas accompanied by sangria, and then a paella with seafood, chicken, turkey, chorizo sausage and lamb, very nice it was too!

Next day we were off to Le Mont Saint Michel following the coast road via Cancale. I think I will talk about that in my next post, but I’ll leave you with the photo at the top of this page as a bit of a teaser!

In the mornings I usually walk down to the boulangerie in our street and buy some bread, which is still warm. The lady knows me now and smiles although the conversation is rather limited. “Bonjour madame.” “Un pain cereales s’il vous plait.” “Bonne journée madame.” That sort of thing.

I have bread or toast for breakfast, Pauline has muesli. For lunch we have bread and cheese and tomatoes, or bread and an egg, occasionally baked beans with sausages, but these are no ordinary baked beans, these are cooked in duck fat for some reason and are very tasty. The cheese is trois laits, which is made from goats milk, sheep milk and cows milk and we buy it from the local market. In the photo there is also one of the little French baby cars which are 400cc two cylinder diesels and are even smaller than a Smart car. It is possible to buy them restricted to 50 km/h in which case you do not need a licence! The hotel just down the road from us has a truck version as per this photo:

For dinner we are somewhat spoiled for choice as there’s quite a lot of variety in the meat sold here, for instance the other night we had duck casserole as duck was on special. Another time we had a pair of quails. The fresh fish from either the market or the supermarket is fantastic, we had fresh sardines one night, Pauline gutted them and pulled the backbone out and I dipped them in flour and fried them – delicious! You can buy trout here and I love it, like salmon only much more delicate. We generally go to the local market on Saturday and stock up on vegetables, cheese and sometimes fish. Here’s some photos of the market and a crab, maybe coming to get you!

We’ve been in Josselin a few days now. We had an interesting trip from Paris first taking the TGV to Rennes and from there a bus which stopped at a couple of small villages along the way. We’ve been settling in, finding out how things work, unpacking and making ourselves at home. Yesterday we picked up the car which comes with the house, from a local garage, it’s an old Ford Fiesta diesel which sounds like a tractor but it seems to go alright. We drove it to a local village, Saint-Marcel, to visit the resistance museum of Brittany.

The house is great. It’s 17th century, three storeys with a bathroom on each floor, rustic kitchen, virtually no straight lines on any of the floors or walls, wooden beamed ceilings, wireless high speed internet access. We are very pleased with it.

The village itself is something to see, most of the houses are 16th or 17th century with the bottom floor being built of stone and the remaining floors being half timbered with thick stone walls and plaster. The oldest house was built in 1538! There’s a lovely castle dating from the 11th century although rebuilt in the 15th century. There is also a canalised river running beside the castle that runs from Brest to Nantes – we rode bicycles along the tow path today and watched a boat going through a couple of locks.

All in all, we seem to have fallen on our feet! Here’s some photos:

We very much enjoyed our time here, it’s a very liveable city as well as a stunningly beautiful one. We had a look inside Notre Dame, we read our books beside the Seine, we took a boat tour on the Seine, we followed the footsteps of Inspector Maigret from the Quai des Orfevres where his office was, to Rue Richard Lenoir where he supposedly lived, and finally to Montmartre where many of his cases originated. In Montmartre we discovered a tiny vineyard which produces around 850 bottles of wine annually, the money being donated to social causes. We saw the house belonging to Theo van Gogh where Vincent himself stayed from 1886 to 1888.  We saw the famous Moulin Rouge but no can-can girls as I would think they were probably still asleep at that time of day.

One of the best parts to my mind was, in our neighborhood, seeing how the locals socialise at their bistros in the evening and talk over a glass of wine or beer, and later over a leisurely meal, sitting out on the pavements watching the world go by. Even though we were only two blocks from a heavily touristed area, there was little sign of it here, apart from us of course!

We arrived at Paris  Charles de Gaulle airport from Munich after a reasonably pleasant wait, helped by Lufthansa supplying free coffee, tea and newspapers at the gate. Pauline managed to sleep for a while. The cost of things in Europe became immediately apparent when I bought two bottles of water and was charged 7.4 euros – that’s around $8 NZ for a bottle of water! Anyway we liked the terminal, it is a late ’60s concrete structure a bit like the beehive and has Jetsons-like plastic tubes with travellators running along them taking you places. We caught the Air France bus to Gare de Lyon, and caught a taxi playing Louis Armstrong rather loudly to The Hotel Minerve. The traffic and standard of driving here has been commented on many times but they certainly drive with a lot of flair – lots of scooters and motorcycles and taxis and buses all mixing it up quite aggressively but they seem to know what they are doing.

The hotel is very nice, it’s ideally situated on the left bank a couple of blocks from the river Seine, not too far from Notre Dame. The Pantheon and the Sorbonne are also close by. There’s a shop across the road that sells crepes and bread rolls with cheese and ham which we usually go to for breakfast. There are several small grocer sorts of shops that sell fresh fruit, beer and wine. And there are any number of little cafes and bistros with chairs on the pavement and reasonable prices for dinner. Here’s a photo of Pauline at the one across the road, with our hotel in the background:

The drive north to the border from Liberty was very pleasant, lots of forests and fairly light traffic. We stopped near Plattsburgh for lunch, and then drove until we hit the border about 5 hours after we’d set off. The Canadian border guard was mostly interested in how much money we were bringing with us for some reason. Once across into Canada we asked Homer to find us some accomodation, and by a piece of luck he directed us to a lovely little Auberge, or Inn, on the river Hudson, surrounded by cornfields in a tiny holiday village. We got the last available room. There was a veranda overlooking the river, a pool, a small bar and a kitchen. Our room also opened out onto it’s own little veranda overlooking the river. The people were very kind and tolerated our lamentable french with plenty of smiles.  Their old black dog, Jessie was friendly to all the guests and kept the staff busy throwing her ball. Pauline had a swim, we sat on the deck and read our books, had a very nice dinner and all in all it was most satisfactory. Next morning we headed off to Montreal airport. I was very grateful to the GPS navigating me through the Montreal traffic! We stopped for luch just near the airport at a place called eggsOeufs which served Quebec breakfasts which in my case consist of eggs, toast, pancakes, fresh fruit, sausages, baked beans and cretons which is a pork spread that goes on your toast. Yummy! We dropped the car at the airport and we were on our way to Paris.

From Niagara, we crossed the border into the USA and headed for Helen and Cas’s house in Liberty NY. The border crossing was rather relaxed compared to what it’s like arriving by plane, there were no forms to fill out and the border guy just looked at our passports, asked us what town we were headed to and sent us on our way. The freeway  was actually a toll road for a while, which Homer warned us of and said “I hope you’ve got some money, as I’ve spent all mine on chocolate cigars.” Fortunately we did have some money and we drove for about 2 hours until we reached the town of Geneva, a charming little town on a lake where we stayed the night in a motel 6 as everywhere else was full. Next day, we arrived in Liberty in the middle of the afternoon to be greeted by Helen, Cas and their 6 cats. The cats are great characters, and it was cool to catch up with Helen and see Cas again. We went for a walk around the lake across the road and observed the trees that the local beavers had felled. Unfortunately the beavers have been driven away by rampant capitalists or something so we didn’t see any. We had a great meal of local organic free range lamb sitting outside on the deck. Next day we slept in a fair bit and in the afternoon went for a drive through the charming local towns to sit by the Delaware river and contemplate why it is lawful to shoot frogs with 22 calibre shot (there was a sign by the river listing the things you could and could not do.) On the way back we stopped for an icecream at an icecream stall run by a lady who appeared to much prefer talking to her customers to actually serving icecreams – we were there for about half an hour but the icecreams were excellent – I had a low fat no sugar pecan icecream and it was delicious. That night we sat out on the deck again and were joined by some good friends of Cas and Helens and had a great time. Next day we had some serious driving to do to get back to somewhere near the Montreal airport so it was up early and away by ten. Thanks for having us Helen and Cas! For some reason I didn’t take any pictures from this trip, possibly because I was driving most of the time, but here’s one I took earlier:

We got here at about 5:30 am – plane to Paris leaves at 10:40 – still it’s a very nice airport. Anyway, from Peterborough we had to drive to a donut shop near Niagara falls as Simon was meeting a friend there and leaving us. So we had an interesting drive through the middle of Toronto’s motorway system and a coffee and sandwich at the donut shop, then Pauline and I thought we’d better see the Falls as we were passing right by there. Well the Canadian side of the town is like a very tacky version of Queenstown, with casinos, tattoo parlours, and gazillions of tourists. Funnily enough the US side is a national park and not tacky at all. However, we braved the sudden thunderstorm, (we’d been having thunderstorms most afternoons, and believe me driving on the freeway in the middle of one can be a bit hairy,) and walked to the best viewing spot. You can hear the thunder of the falls way before you see them, and they are quite spectacular alright. I’m glad we went as it’s something I’ve heard about all my life, although I agree with Pauline that I wouldn’t go out of my way to see them again. You can get a boat from the US side, and the boat goes right into the spray at the bottom, I imagine it would be quite something. You can see the boat in one of the pictures:

It’s been a while since I posted but we’ve really been quite busy – on our last day in St John’s we had to go to the barber as it was a very nice traditional one, so Simon had his hair cut there. We also visited the Pharmacy museum, I’ve taken a few pictures. Naturally Pauline and Simon were most interested. We had a nice flight back to Montreal and stayed in a lovely B & B in the centre of the city,  we went out among the elegant Montrealers for  a nice traditional French four course meal for $25 each at a steak house. Next morning we picked up a 2009 Ford Focus from Hertz and blessing Homer (the GPS) we drove to Peterborough to visit Pauline’s colleague Peri from Trent University. Peri could not have been more hospitable, she gave us a meal at her charming two storey brick house surrounded by maple trees,  showed us around the university which is in a delightful setting surrounded by forest, and Peri and her husband drove us to a winery about 45 minutes into the country where we had an admirable meal and some excellent wine. Thanks very much for your hospitality Peri, we really loved our stay in Peterborough! Here’s a few pictures.