Mont St. Michel and St. Malo

Saturday morning we headed to Mont St. Michel – the huge abbey that dates from 708, or something crazy like that. Mont St. Michel is a huge gothic abbey built on a tidal island that becomes inaccessible to the rest of the mainland when there are high tides; it’s pretty impressive to this huge structure pop up out of nowhere from the middle of the Normandy countryside. This was the second time that I’ve seen it, but the weather was a bit nicer this time, and it was actually really cool to see it again. We didn’t pay to go inside the abbey, but even without paying you can walk up as far as you want towards the top, go in the small gardens surrounding the abbey, and enjoy some great views of the surrounding countryside. Check out the below video of Alec doing his best “monk in Mont St. Michel” impression … possibly my favorite highlight of the whole family vacation :)

Then we drove to St. Malo, a really well-known seaside city whose old town center is completely enclosed by fortified stone walls. It was a pretty cold day, so first we stopped in a little café and had hot wine to warm up; the “vin chaud” was awesome … hot mix of red wine, rum, sugar, and oranges. The tide was really low, so we were able to walk out to one of the nearby islands, where the French author Chateaubriand is buried. The views from the island back to the walled city were pretty amazing, so check out the pictures below. You’ll also notice that we took individual family portraits in various wooden cut-outs that were spread out throughout the city, how cute!