Monday was a day trip. We had to be at Gare Montparnasse insanely early to catch the Eurorail at 8:30 AM Paris time. The train takes about 3 hours to get to the coastal town of St. Malo. I slept most of the way but something must have been going on because Tanya managed to empty the battery to her camera on the train ride. We were greeted by some guy (I wish I remembered his name but I don't) at the train station in St. Malo. He was our driver/tour guide for the day. We were in a small van with 4 other people. The itinerary looked like this - 2 hours in St. Malo, 4 hours in St. Michel, 2 hours in Dinan, then a drive to Rennes to hop on a train back to Paris.
St. Malo and Dinan are small medieval towns. St. Malo is neat because there is a fortress wall that surrounds the entire town and you can walk all the way around on the top of it. I had to stop at a pharmacy for bandaids (blister issues) and then we climbed to the top of the wall. The views were awesome. It wasn't terribly crowded and we had more than enough time to check out the town. It was extremely old and quaint. Very pretty. Lots of cafes and small stores. The coast was chilly but still comfortable. I took a ton of pictures which are in the photo section. Once we descended we grabbed a sandwich and hopped back in the van to travel to St. Michel. St. Michel was about an hour away.
St. Michel was built in the 700's AD. We visited during low tide. There were 3 things going on that sort of sucked the glory out of it a little - construction ,renovation and a strike/protest. They are currently building a new road from the mainland to the "rock", as they call it. This massive construction has angered the monks, etc. that live in the abbey, so they are protesting. And there was some upkeep going on at the actual abbey that required a lot of scaffolding. Our tour guy dropped us at the outskirts and then a big bus transports you to the base of the rock. This area is extremely touristy. Very, very crowded. There are roughly 900 steps to climb to get to the top of the abbey. Once you get up there you are privy to some amazing views. We wandered around and checked stuff out and then started descending. Within the walls as you descend you walk through narrow streets that are full of shops. Tourist traps, restaurants, ice cream places. Then we hopped back in our van and headed to Dinan. Roughly 40 minutes away.
Dinan is insane. It is very, very old and sooo pretty. It oozes history. Our tour guy grew up there so he knew a lot about the area. Not a lot of tourists so it was much more laid back. We were dropped at a church and then were given free reign. Aside from the town's awesomeness, it also had some strange things going on:
- Cats. They had a store with a window full of cat.... figurines? They were all hairy and weird. I took pictures. And there were dog statues and paintings with a generals body but a dogs head. And the cherry on top of the cake.... a man in something that resembled a Rascal. He was scooting around the block with a cat on his lap. The cat was wearing a harness. It looked like Dr. Evil and Mr. Biggelsworth. Bizarre.
So Scott wanted to climb to the top of the bell tower. Tanya and I were lagging and I decided I was going to walk up the stairs really, really stupid for s.hits and giggles. Turns out it was a blessing in disguise because the fact that I had torn the s.hit out of my pants was brought to Tanya's attention. And I don't mean a small tear that a quarter would fit in. I mean a giant tear that a pancake would easily fit through. I have no idea how or where or when that happened. We had been everywhere! I don't want to know how many people noticed that. I was in an abbey with monks, for gods sake! Anywho... I had to wear Scott's coat around my waist for the remainder of the day.
So that ended daytrip day. Our tour guy drove us to Rennes so we could catch the train back to Paris. We were all exhausted. Scott and I would like to make another trip to France where we just visit small towns on the West Coast. The abbey was amazing but I found the small towns to be much more interesting.