Day 9: Day trip to Mont Saint-Michel and nearby towns

The next day we got up early, and left the hotel before breakfast. In fact we triggered some kind of alarm, and the man at the desk asked if we were checking out. Non, and non. But we had to leave early to catch a train. [This was a long day, so I'll put the jump break right up here at the beginning.]

A coffee cup from the
morning. I love the
remarks on it.

We took the Metro to Gare Montparnasse (strictly speaking the Metro station is called Montparnasse–Bienvenüe) and then walked the considerable distance underground to get to the big, long-distance trains, the Trains à Grande Vitesse. Our tickets were for St. Malo, clear out on the Breton coast, where a driver would meet us to take us to Mont Saint-Michel.

I booked this trip because, when Marie and I planned what we wanted to do in France, we saw that a few companies offered trips from Paris to Mt. St.-Michel, and it looked like fun. Most of them hired a bus: you board the bus in Paris, spend four hours driving to the island, spend a couple of hours clambering around the abbey, and then four hours back home. But one company—just one—had a different model: Use the TGV. That reduces your four-hour drive (each way) to two hours. And so we can use all the time you save to visit a couple other places as well, St. Malo and Dinan. It cost more, but that's the one I booked.

After I booked the trip online—this was maybe a week before our departure from the US—they called me. Apparently their season ended on October 31, and they had no regular tours in November. But it just so happened … that someone else had already asked for an off-season tour; if I could rearrange my plans to travel when they wanted to travel, we could all go together. Of course I did. Right away. And that's how we found ourselves traveling to Gare Montparnasse before dawn on November 9.

We got coffee and breakfast (sandwiches) in the train station, while waiting to board. When our track was announced we clustered over near it, and boarded the train when we finally could. And one minute after our scheduled departure time—it might have been two minutes, I'm not quite sure, but certainly no more than that—we were under way. The Paris sky was grey, though the sun still had not crested the horizon, and already we were speeding through the banlieue.

The flag of St. Malo.

I probably dozed on the trip. I know that at one point Marie went back to the dining car and got us both more coffee.

And so we got to St. Malo, and found our driver. I think there were five of us in all. He bustled us into his van, and drove to the gates of St. Malo's fortified Old Town while giving us (rapid-fire) a quick history of the area. When he got to the gates of Old Town he gave us all maps and a timetable: "Walk around the walls, for sure. If you want to go into town, check out the church. There are also shops where you can get a local food like a galette-saucisse. Meet me back here in exactly 90 minutes."

We walked around the walls, from which we could see both the Old Town and the ocean. Marie was especially interested in the sharp, dramatic tides in the area. After we made a circuit of the walls, Marie sat in a café to rest her knees, while I walked into town. I got a couple of pictures of the church, and picked up one hot galette-saicisse for each of us. Thus fortified, we rejoined our van exactly on time.

On the drive from St. Malo to Mt. St.-Michel, I know I dozed. I think most of the others did, too. But not Marie. She kept up a running conversation with the driver about local agriculture. (They might have discussed other things too, while I was asleep.) When Mt. St.-Michel first came into view, tiny on the horizon past long miles of fields, the driver stopped for five minutes so we could take pictures and stretch our legs. Then we went on.

Mt. St.-Michel as we
left: the skies were
clear and calm!

Mont Saint-Michel is linked to the mainland by a causeway. When we started to cross the causeway, the weather was overcast with a cool breeze. By the time we reached the far end of the causeway, where the entrance to the town stood, the cold wind was blowing the hard, cold rain almost horizontally; and there was ice and sleet in the air as well. It felt like the Roke Wind from Earthsea, wakened to prevent any evil thing from polluting the island and its abbey.

Marie had not wanted to test her knees by clambering up and down the many stairs in the abbey. But under the onslaught of the weather, the only security we could find was in pushing forward. We saw no cafés, nor anywhere she could rest. And suddenly we were at the entrance to the abbey itself.

So in we went. And in fact Marie did a fine job maneuvering up and down all those stairs. We went slowly, but for all that we had plenty of time to walk through the whole abbey, see the sights, and even stop in at a restaurant on the way downhill for a bite of lunch. (Why didn't we see that restaurant when we arrived? I don't know.) But of course it would be foolish to attribute any kind of intentionality to the weather, now, wouldn't it? Likewise it is surely a coincidence that by the time we left Mt. St.-Michel to return to the mainland, the air was clear and blue and calm. Totally undisturbed. It meant I got a beautiful picture as a parting gift. And of course I can't speculate on anything more than that, because it would be silly. Surely it's obvious that the weather couldn't have been toying with us!

Dinan basilica,
by the parking lot.

From there we drove to Dinan, a town that still looks medieval in many ways. Again, our driver gave us a map and a timeline. We hiked up the main road (wet cobblestones in the rain, all the way) and then turned in towards some shops. We looked at the bell-tower, and the basilica. Marie found an "English garden" behind the basilica, from which we could see the whole town. I found a specialty store where I bought a bottle of Breton apple liqueur. (I wish we had been staying long enough to justify a bottle of Breton whisky! But the whisky bottles were larger, and drinking one of them would have been slower.)

We met our driver on time, in a parking lot hard by the basilica. He drove us to the train station in Rennes, from which we boarded the 19:30 TGV back to Paris. That took another two hours. And then it was the Metro from Montparnasse back to our hotel in the Quartier Latin, and finally bed. We slept very well that night.