Our alarms went off very early on Thursday morning. The original plan was to pack the night before our departure from London, but since we kind of slept through the evening we had to pack things up in the morning. Luckily packing was quick, we checked out painlessly, and we were rolling our suitcases to King’s Cross station to have breakfast. We found a place in the station that was open and had some egg sandwiches and coffees. While we were there, we noticed there wasn’t a line for Platform 9 3/4 (since it was so damn early) so we took a few souvenir shots. Fun!
We wandered slowly over to St. Pancras to catch the Eurostar to Paris, and we were surprised to find that they were already getting ready to depart. We hustled through security and passport control, and then got onto our carriage and found some space for our suitcases in the baggage area. Success! We walked over to our seats, but there were two guys sitting in them. I double checked out tickets, and then asked the guys. Their response was interesting – they said, “Somebody is in our seats, so you can probably go and sit anywhere.” We walked down the length of the car, but it seemed like most seats were filling up. There was no staff at the end of the car, so we went back and I politely asked them to move. They sighed and got up and left, and we settled in to the seats we purchased. Finally we could relax. Luckily the two guys got a spine and confronted the people in their seats, and it turned out they were in the wrong carriage, so I guess everyone could sit on the journey. Good news.
From St. Pancras station to Paris Gare du Nord it is about two and half hours by the Eurostar train. As we pulled away from London we started to see some more countryside scenery, but before you knew it the train was going underground. Following that we spent a surprisingly short time in the dark going under the channel tunnel, and then we came up in France. I think the total time under the channel was less than 30 minutes, but I’m not sure. Anyway, we sped through northern France, and the weather continued to alternate between bright clear skies, sudden rainstorms, and clouds.
Once we arrived at Gare du Nord we caught a taxi to take us to Gare Montparnasse station. It is perfectly reasonable to catch a metro to take us to the station, and theoretically we had plenty of time to get there to catch our TGV train, but we thought it would be easier to deal with our suitcases, and we’d have a chance to enjoy the sights of the city. I’m glad we decided on this method – it nice to look around as we traveled. The total cost was only about 16 euros, so very reasonable. We had a short break at Gare Montparnasse, so we used the toilets (an interesting pay system that required tokens), bought some snacks for the train at a bakery (called “Paul”), and then we waited around for the station to announce the platform for our train. Once they did we lugged our bags into the correct carriage, and sat down in very comfortable seats.
Our seats were in first class so they had plenty of reclining and leg room. We sat across from each other, and next to us was a set of four seats facing each other. A lady in that group had a tiny Chihuahua that she produced now and then to drink water or walk around a bit. The guy next to her struck up a conversation (in French), and even though I don’t speak French it became apparent that she had a serious speech impediment. They wrote each other notes on paper, but I could tell the guy was wishing he didn’t start the conversation – it was taking a lot of effort to continue it.
One thing we noticed right away was the train announcements were only made in French – no English at all, so we were hoping we’d be able to hear the announcement for our stop, Rennes. Luckily things were clear enough to understand and we were able to get off at the correct station. We went out of the north gate, turned right, and found the bus stop area. I was led to believe that the bus departures were timed with the arrival of the TGV from Paris, but we found out that this was not exactly the case. We had two hours to wait. Luckily, we are really good at waiting around – especially in Europe.
I ran back over to the train station and went into a place that had a cooler. I picked up a couple of beers to bring back and drink at the bus station, but the cashier pantomimed that I’d need to buy some food if I wanted the beers. No problem – I bought a sandwich, and took everything back to enjoy with Kuniko. We toasted our success, and Kuniko almost dropped the beer leading to a minor beer explosion. We moved out suitcases out of the way and then we were fine. Sitting on a bench at the bus station means that a lot of people will come and go. The bench next to ours became occupied with a young couple who took out pouches of tobacco and rolled their own cigarettes. Then they started smoking away. We had nowhere to run, so we had to sit and take it. Ugh. Another pair of faces we saw were Japanese, and Kuniko told me that they looked a little disappointed to bump into another Japanese person. Oh, well! We ended up seeing them pretty often during our short journey to and from Mont St. Michel.
Finally, our bus arrived, and we took about an hour’s ride to the north coast. We enjoyed the scenery during the ride, and I really liked seeing the French countryside. Lots of agriculture and open space. The bus dropped us off at a sort of way-station, and then we took a tram from there to the foot of Mont St. Michel. It was a pretty dramatic view – the old abbey perched on top of rocks and a small town below it. There was a lot of construction on the peninsula leading from the main part of the continent, but it looked about 60% complete. I imagine that in a few years the approach will be completely different.
We were some of the only tourists heading in rolling along our suitcases – we still hadn’t been to a hotel since London, so it was a little strange. We had thought about this issue when we planned the trip, but ended up deciding that we should just go ahead and drag them on in. Inside Mont St. Michel there were narrow cobblestone streets and lots of tourists walking around, so that made maneuvering the suitcases that much more difficult. After a five minute walk we found our hotel, and they checked us in from the counter of their restaurant. They were nice enough to dispatch staff to carry our suitcases to our hotel room, which was up a small set of stairs and down a narrow alley. We weren’t sure what the room would be like, but it turned out to be completely renovated and modern. It seemed like the renovations were done within a few months before – very clean and comfortable. We ditched our suitcases and headed out the door to check out the island.
At the time the tide was out so we could walk around about half the island on wet sand and mud, and that gave us some nice views of the Abbey. The smell of sea was strong, but we couldn’t really see the ocean – it was strange. We decided to go back in and explore the village inside, and eventually ended up at our hotel restaurant for drinks. I ordered two beers from the menu at random, and one turned out to be a beer spiked with framboise, so it had a sweet berry taste. Oops. We killed them anyway, and spent the rest of the afternoon walking up and down the steps and hillsides taking pictures of just about every nook and cranny of the place.
Dinner was at a small restaurant that was one of the only places that stayed open after 8 pm. The food was pretty good, but the restaurant itself was quite touristy. Kuniko had grilled lamb, I had some local crab (all body and very tiny legs!), and I also had a side dish of ratatouille that hit the spot. Complete with red wine and a cheese platter for dessert – we were happy to be back in France.
As usual Kuniko made lots of attempts at communication in the local language, and as usual the servers were charmed by her efforts. The way she laughs and smiles at her own attempts, success or failure, somehow always wins the servers to our side. It is one of my favorite things about traveling with her.
With dinner out of the way we walked back out into the darkness to get some pictures of the abbey at night. It still was barely getting dark at 10 pm, so it took a while to get the shots I wanted. Finally we came back to the hotel and called it a night. We went to bed at the latest hour so far! It had been a busy day in two countries!
