Part I of Normandy adventure: Mont St Michel

After taking a pleasant train ride through the French countryside to Caen, Mark & Danielle, Clayton & Amy (our Paris roommates), and Andrew & I all piled into a rental van and made our way towards Mont St Michel. For those of you who have no idea what I'm talking about, it's a monastery built on a rocky island-ish. I guess technically it's not an island since it isn't always surrounded by water... 

See? Not sure what to call it. Anyway... 

It already looks pretty impressive from the outside. It was quite windy (as it always tends to be along the coast) but the sun was shining brightly as you can see, and once we got into the walls of the fort it was perfect.

I loved just walking around the streets of the place. There's a cathedral at the top, then around that a monastery, then below that a village where there are now plenty of vendors selling their wares and taking advantage of stupid tourists like us :)

I finally got leggings by the way. I feel so scandalous

It was really a magical place though. There were gardens and trees growing out of all the corners so it wasn't at all just a stone cold place--I can see how people would have come here to find peace and commune with God, it's a miniature paradise. And so many birds! They didn't stop chirping one second!

So after walking around and being very tempted by all the crepes (although we had stopped for some on the way--and they were delicious) and the butter cookies, we paid to get into the actual monastery and chapel. (Except I got in free because I'm European. Hehe)

The chapel was beautiful, and very clean, which is something I'm not so used to--the main Bordeaux cathedral is always black from all the pollution!

In the monastery's refectory. I guess this is their interpretation of how monks eat?

Some pretty narrow streets...

And stairways!

This was pretty funny and somewhat unrelated: In the gift shop they had plates for kids that had little sayings about being a lady/princess, like this one below. It was pretty awesome.

"I never leave the table until the meal is done"

A view from the village

Also, I was really excited because every time we'd go on trips you'd see those stupid personalized bracelets or keychains, but they never had my name, only Lydie (the French version of my name). But this time I found mine!

Too bad I really don't want a dolphin bracelet...

That evening we were definitely all tuckered out and promptly fell asleep in the car. Poor Andrew drove though, so he wasn't quite as refreshed as the rest of us when we returned to Bayeux, where our hotel was. We set out to find a place to eat and explored the town a little. Bayeux is gorgeous by the way, it was lovely, complete with a canal cutting through it.

And that's about all for now. Plenty more of picture-intensive posts to come :)