One place in France both Todd and I have always wanted to visit is Mont Saint-Michel. It is kind of out of the way, but we thought, why not?
Our original plan was to take a high speed train from Paris that would take 1.5 hours. Well, thanks to the transportation strike, our train was cancelled. Luckily, I had thought to reserve a rental car just in case. So instead of 1.5 hours by train, we drove for 3.25 hours. Since we would be driving ourselves, we had the opportunity to see a little more, or so we thought. We basically drove through fog for 3 hours.
We did make a stop in a the sweet little town of Vitré. Our main goal was to visit the castle, but since it was New Year’s day, it was closed.
It still was a great place to take a break from driving to stretch our legs…
and admire a couple gorgeous gothic cathedrals.
We even discovered one of the shells that mark the path to the Compestela de Santiago that we discovered in northern Spain last winter.
After stretching our legs we arrived in Rennes, which would serve as our home base for the next two nights. It was literally a breath of fresh air after crowded, crazy Paris. We stayed in the old town, which is so, so cute. Many of the half timber buildings date from the 16th and 17th centuries.
We went off in search of dinner, something that proved very difficult, since nearly everything was closed for New Year’s Day. We did happen upon a light show that was projected onto the Parliament building, that reminded me a lot of the light show that we saw projected onto the Alcazaba in Málaga.
The light show was followed by some street performers that were a lot of fun. Leo especially enjoyed them. It was so refreshing to be treated to such a fun spectacle without feeling like sardines in a can (which, unfortunately was how it felt a lot of the time in Paris and the light show in Málaga)..
We ended up finding some fantastic burgers (even a veggie one) near the Rue de la Soif (Drinkers’ Alley). The town didn’t seem quite real. I felt like I was walking through some kind of medieval set in Disneyland.
We got to stay in the attic of one of the 16th century homes. To get to our apartment we had to go up 3 flights of the most warped and slanted stairs.
Rennes was just a home base from which we could easily get to Mont Saint Michel and to the airport, but we really enjoyed the time we spent there and wished we had had a day or two more to explore this cute medieval town.
Adrift in Andalucía 