Castles, Cathedrals, and (Wine) Caves - Part 1!

(This was originally a monster of a post, so I'm breaking it into two parts. The next one should be up in the next few days!)

I was off from class on Tuesday, November 11th, in honor of Armistice Day, a national holiday in France, so I decided to (gasp!) skip class the Monday before to take advantage of a four-day weekend. The ever-nerdy student in me cringed at the thought of missing a three and a half hour lecture, but a friend had invited me on an organized trip that weekend and the itinerary sounded too great to pass up:

Saturday: Saint Malo
Sunday: Dinan and Mont Saint Michel

Monday: Chambord Castle (Château)

Tuesday: Bourges and a wine tasting in central France

The registration fee covered all of the transportation and lodging costs, the entrance fees to the major sites, and most of the meals for the four days. I usually prefer traveling on my own or with a couple friends to large, organized trips on a coach bus, but I figured that it would have been a lot of work and much more expensive to pull together a similar trip on my own. Also, since the trip was put together by a group called iStudent Lyon, which caters to Erasmus and international students, I thought it would be a fun group of people. So, I bit the bullet and signed up!


Saturday in Saint Malo
After an overnight bus ride on Friday (never would have guessed from the map that you could drive ten hours and still be in France!), we arrived in Saint Malo bright and early around 8am, eager to start the weekend. Everyone was ravenous, so we dropped off our bags at the place we'd be staying the first two nights and started walking towards the old city to get breakfast.

One of the first things I noticed about Saint Malo was that it has a totally different vibe from Lyon and the other towns and cities I've visited so far. Located on the northwest coast of France, it has an undeniably beach-y feel, with seagulls cawing overhead and the smell of the ocean lingering in the air. I imagine that the beaches are packed in the summer when all of France goes on vacation in August. My professor said that Saint Malo is where the French go because Southern France along the riviera (Monaco, Nice, Marseilles, etc) is too expensive!

Just outside the old city walls

Cute-bordering-on-creepy doll-themed cafe where we ate breakfast

After breakfast with the group, we had the rest of the day to explore Saint Malo at our own pace. The weather in the morning was fairly clear, so a few friends and I strolled on top of the wall around the city to take in the views of the water and the forts. When a huge rainstorm rolled in during the afternoon, we decided to stop for lunch and then ducked into the museum at the Saint Malo Castle for a few hours to learn more about the town's history. The city is really interesting and dates way back, but what was perhaps most fascinating is that after the town was largely destroyed in WWII, it was rebuilt to look exactly as it had before. If you didn't know it, you would think that the buildings and roads had been there for hundreds of years!

Beautiful Saint Malo architecture

I couldn't get enough of the yellow moss on all of the buildings...it was so pretty!

View of Fort National from the city wall

Me and Laura!

Saint Malo Castle

View from the castle during the rainstorm

After a full day, we headed back to our home base for Saturday and Sunday nights, an auberge de jeuness (like a youth hostel, but one step up) in Saint Malo not far from the main part of town, to relax before dinner. Before the trip, I had been prepared for bunk rooms for 8-10 people in each, but I was pleasantly surprised. My friend and I had a room with a private bathroom to ourselves! It was as basic as it could get (white walls, simple, etc), but it was clean, comfortable, and exactly what we needed. As a side note, I took great joy in the fact that our room number was 722, aka my birthday. My roommate and good friend here in Lyon, though, seemed totally uninterested. I realized later that she just thought I was being nonsensical because she thought I was saying that my birthday was the 7th day of the 22nd month. I forgot that in Europe dates are written day/month/year!
 
During dinner at the auberge (they served a full meal with bread, appetizers, entrees, and dessert - whoah!), I started to pay more attention to the group dynamics on the trip. One thing that was really interesting to me, though not unexpected, was that the group quickly split along language lines. There were the German, Italian, and Commonwealth clans, a multinational group using English as a common denominator, and, lastly, a group of us determined to practice French, even if we spoke one of the other languages fluently. There wasn't a whole lot of cross-pollination across the groups, but the students trying to speak mostly in French slipped in and out of the other conversations from time to time, depending on who we were with.

After dinner, several of us congregated in the common area of one of the buildings, and I found myself perched between the German- and Italian-speaking groups. A mixture of German, Italian, and French swirled in the air, and every once in a while someone would shift languages to speak to somebody on the opposite side of the circle. After most of the Italian students turned in, though, the group shifted to speaking exclusively German. I spent about 10-15 minutes blankly looking around trying to figure out what the conversation was about before deciding to head upstairs too. I wasn't upset -- I was exhausted and secretly grateful for the excuse to go to bed -- but I was still struck by the feeling of being excluded completely from a conversation because I didn't know the language. It's a funny thing...language has immense power to bring people together, but it can easily do the opposite as well.


Sunday in Dinan and Mont Saint Michel
After breakfast at the auberge Sunday morning, we hopped on the bus to go to Dinan, a charming little town not too far from Saint Malo. We had about two hours to walk around, just enough to wander through the narrow streets of the old town, stop in the cathedral, and stroll out to a panorama viewpoint overlooking the river. We also used the time to find something to eat for lunch during the bus ride to our next stop. Not as easy as you might think, since everything in France shuts down on Sundays!

Had to take a picture of the Sherlock Holmes store sign...can't wait for the show to come back!

 

After Dinan, we got back on the bus for the hour or so drive to Mont Saint Michel, a major tourist site and one of the main draws for the trip. It has a long history, but basically Mont Saint Michel is a monastery with a huge abbey on a tiny island. I didn't realize that there is literally nothing nearby. It's actually a little bizarre because you park in a massive parking lot (it must be a zoo during high season!) and then either walk or take the shuttle out to the site.

First views of Mont Saint Michel

When we got to the base of the island, we headed straight up the steps to the abbey so that we could enter with our group tickets, but once we were in we were free to explore on our own. I opted to take a guided tour of the abbey with two or three others in the group, and then afterwards wandered a bit taking pictures. The views were beautiful, but the narrow ramparts and streets were packed with so many people that it was difficult to move around. Admittedly, I joined right in, stopping every few steps to snap photos of the abbey from every possible angle and in every possible light, but sometimes you just want a little space when you do it!

Sunset at Mont Saint Michel

As the sun began to set over Mont Saint Michel, a few friends and I decided to stroll along the boardwalk back to the bus instead of taking the shuttle. Looking back at the abbey, quiet after all of the tourists had left for the day, I was struck with a sense of something I still can't put my finger on. I've played around with all kinds of words to describe it - sad, lonely, melancholy, silent, and imposing - but it wasn't any of those. The closest I can come up with is empty. It was almost as if you could physically feel the island (and all of its 44 residents, according to Wikipedia) getting ready to go to sleep that night, waiting to welcome a fresh horde of tourists in the morning.

Mont Saint Michel closing up for the night.

Back at the bus, we drove to our last stop for the day, a town on the water called Dinard. It was dark by the time we arrived, but we weren't there to go sightseeing. We were there to eat galettes! Before, when I thought of a galette, I thought of a sort of rustic pie à la this recipe from Smitten Kitten, so I was expecting something similar to that. In Bretagne (aka Brittany, France), however, it turns out that a galette is very similar to a crepe but is larger and made with buckwheat flour. We each had a dinner galette served with an egg, meat, and emmental cheese on top, as well as a dessert galette (mine had salted caramel). They were both delicious! And to wash them down, we each had a mug of hard apple cider, which is a traditional drink in Brittany and Normandy.

Full of delicious crepes, we returned to the auberge in Saint Malo for the night, ready for the next adventures in store!

To be continued...

Hiking Mount Moucherotte

I still had a whole weekend left of break after I got back from Paris, and I really wanted to try a hike I had heard about before winter blankets the mountains with snow. Since a few other friends from the Monday dinners were also eager to hike, we decided to rent a car again rather than trying to brave the train + bus combo (on a Sunday, no less) to get to the trailhead.

When you rent cars in Europe, though, there is generally a maximum number of kilometers you can drive per day, and getting to and from the hike was going to exceed the daily limit. So, we ended up paying a few extra euros to rent the car for the entire weekend and took advantage of our freedom to squeeze in a little Saturday trip to a Vienne, a tiny town about a half hour from Lyon.

Unfortunately, Vienne was more or less shut down for the day because it was All Saint’s Day (aka the reason I had a week off from class), but we still spent a few hours strolling around admiring the Gallo-Roman ruins and some lovely churches. 

On Sunday morning, we met up early to head to Saint-Nizier-du-Moucherotte, a tiny town just outside of Grenoble nestled in the Vecours range of the French Alps. We had perfect weather for the hike - we could see Mont Blanc way off in the distance from the top because the sky was so clear! There was also a great view of Grenoble down below. The photos don't come close to doing the hike justice!

Overlooking Grenoble. See the tall white peak way off in the distance to the left? That's Mont Blanc!

 

It took us about four to five hours to hike up and back, and we arrived back at the car to return home just as the sky started to turn dark. Overall, it was a fantastic adventure! I'm hoping to make it back to Grenoble to do skiing sometime this winter, and I've been told that Grenoble is the place to eat fondue. That's definitely happening.

Paris, Je T’Aime

When I first started making plans for fall break, I thought I would try to go to Rome to meet my parents while they were there on vacation with two friends. Unfortunately costs, timing, and logistics foiled our efforts to make it happen. As it turned out, though, my cousin was going to be in Paris during the same week that I was off from school, so I shifted gears and started making plans to see her instead.

I decided to leave for Paris early on Wednesday morning and stay until Friday afternoon, and, since my experiences with BlaBlaCar going to and from Geneva had been so positive, I booked another ride for the trip. Lyon to Paris by car takes about four and half hours, versus only two or so by train, but I figured that it was worth it to spend half as much (only 30 euro instead of 60!) and to practice listening and speaking with some interesting people. I'm a big fan of this car-sharing thing...do you all think it would work in the States? Because I just might import it to San Francisco! 

When I arrived in Paris, I hopped on the metro to go to the 9^th arrondissement, where I was planning to stay with a friend from high school. I actually hadn’t been in touch with her for over ten years since we left the Fairfax bubble for our respective colleges, but, thanks to Facebook, I knew that she had moved to Paris a few years ago. Before I left the States, I sent her a message (totally out of the blue – I didn’t know if she would even respond) to say hi and to ask if she had any tips for someone moving to France. As it turned out, she wrote me an enthusiastic note back with a ton of incredibly helpful ideas and information. She also said that I should definitely get in touch whenever I made it to Paris and graciously offered me a place to stay, and I took her up on the offer!

Ringing the doorbell outside her apartment, I was really excited to see her again but also a tiny bit nervous. I needn’t have worried, though. She was super warm and inviting, and she made me feel at home right away. We ended up spending the afternoon and evening walking around town and talking, catching up on lost time.

Bagel sandwich in Paris...yum!

Gallery Lafayette

Inside the first Starbucks in Paris. I don't think the company has ever turned a profit in France.

#miniWoodson10yearreunion!

Ladurée macaron taste test!

Thursday morning, I met up with my cousin and her friend to catch the train from the center of Paris to the palace of Versailles. I was really excited to go because I hadn't seen it when I was in Paris for the first time during my semester abroad in 2007. That year the Hall of Mirrors – the most famous room in the palace of Versailles – was under renovation. I couldn’t imagine going to Versailles and not seeing the best part, so, crossing my fingers that I’d be lucky enough to return to Paris, I had put it on my list of must-dos for a future trip.

I had been warned to expect a long line to get in, but we totally lucked out and didn’t wait more than five minutes! Armed with our audio guides (I’m a huge believer in guided tours), we strolled from room to room in the astonishingly ornate palace, trying to imagine what life was like at Versailles. Then, after grabbing some tasty sandwiches for lunch, we spent a few hours meandering through the extensive gardens. The fountains had been turned off for the chillier fall weather, which was a little disappointing, but the silver lining was that the entrance to the gardens was free! And the leaves on the trees were flaunting their beautiful autumn yellows, oranges, and reds, so it was still really lovely! 

Hall of Mirrors!

Cousins at the palace of Versailles!

The visit to Versailles was worth the wait, and I loved exploring it with my cousin. We usually only spend a few hours together here and there for various family events, so getting to hang out with her for the whole day was really wonderful!

The other landmark I hadn’t visited during my last trip to Paris and was determined to see this time around was the Musée D’Orsay, an art museum housing several famous paintings. So on Friday morning, my friend and I hopped on the bikeshare bikes available outside her building to roll over to the museum. I loved the Impressionist paintings (the brush strokes up close are mesmerizing), and I learned a lot of background information from my friend, who has taken several art history classes. I only had a few hours there before I had to head to the meeting point for my ride back to Lyon and could have stayed much longer, but I’m grateful that I finally had the chance to go to the museum! 

Clock inside the Musée D'Orsay

All in all, it was a wonderful trip back to the City of Lights. Looking forward to spending more time there in the next several months!