My trip around France, continued

Three months ago, I promised that I would post more pictures and write more descriptions of my 2 week trip around France. I didn't say how long it would take (although I think I said "soon"). I actually uploaded all the pictures before I left Nantes. Finally, today, I had the chance to work on it a little more. I do realize that this is now 3 1/2 months old, but I think you may find it interesting anyway. I also want to take the opportunity to write about it now, before I forget. I was thinking about all the trips I've taken in my 23 years, and I realized that, for example, I went to Boston 10 years ago and couldn't tell you one thing that I saw! I don't want that to happen with my France trip. Someday, I may even get around to making a scrapbook. For now, blogging about it ensures that I won't forget. To read about the beginning of my trip, click here.

Sunday, March 4: We got up that morning with the intention of heading out to see the Mont Saint Michel (pictured above), an abby founded in the 8th century and at times (depending on the tide) surrounded entirely by water. It took me awhile to get myself going, as I was feeling pretty weak from the night before. After everyone else was ready and waiting, I finally got out of bed (I seriously was not feeling up to moving). I went into the bathroom to get ready and actually laid on the floor for a couple of minutes to work up some strength. Tee hee. The others never actually found that out - they thought I was busy getting ready. The night before, we had elected to not have breakfast at our hotel, since I was hoping for something more than just bread and coffee/tea/hot chocolate. In fact, I was craving cereal. We stopped to have breakfast at a small hotel on the way to the Mont Saint Michel, and they had even fewer choices than our hotel. I came to find out later that the French breakfast consists of bread, jam, butter, and coffee/tea/hot chocolate/orange juice, so I really had no choice in the matter. We arrived at the Mont Saint Michel just in time to miss the beginning of a tour in English. Since it had just started, we decided to run to catch up to it. Hmmm. The 300 steps leading up to the church are not exactly conducive to running. After finally arriving at the top, exhausted, we couldn't even find the tour. So we did a self-guided tour. By mid-afternoon, we were on our way to Saint Malo, a walled port city, which is actually in the Brittany region. It was nice just to walk around (no stair climbing) and take in the beauty of the tide.



After leaving Saint Malo, we headed to Nantes. We noticed right away the difference in the architecture. Without having known where we were, we still could have known that we were not in Normandy. We arrived at my house for dinner. It was nice that they all got to meet each other, and we spent some time planning out the rest of our trip. Laura was able to get a lot of pictures of the kids. She had actually planned on doing a family portrait, but as we arrived so late, it was not to be. We stayed that night in the family-run hotel in Vertou. It almost felt like we were staying with friends, since the proprietors had given me the door code ahead of time and then left our keys on the front desk.

Monday, March 5: After a traditional French breakfast (I still wanted cereal), we headed into downtown Nantes to see the sights. It was fun for me to be the guide, since we were on my turf. I took them through a typical day for me - we parked where I park, rode the tram, went to my school, and bought little quiches and pastries from one of my favorite bakeries (that was my last experience with quiche to date - I think it was too early to start introducing greasy foods). We did some shopping and then went to see the recently re-opened Château des Ducs de Bretagne (Castle of the Dukes of Brittany). Nantes, now part of the region of the Pays-de-la-Loire, used to be the capital of Brittany.

View on Nantes from the Château des Ducs de Bretagne

After the Château, we walked around in the Cathedral of Nantes, as well as the Bouffay neighborhood, the site of many executions back in the day.

After leaving Nantes, we headed back to my house to see if we could get a portrait of the kids, with which we were going to later surprise Caroline and Christian. Well, when we arrived, everyone was puking. Apparently there was a bug going around. Needless to say, we didn't get the portrait. So we drove a couple of towns over to see Clisson. I had seen Clisson one time before with my driving instructor and had been impressed with the architecture and nature. Its Italian-style architecture is uncommon in France. It almost feels like you are entering another country upon arrival.



That night, after a hearty cafeteria-style meal and good conversation at a nearby mall, we slept soundly in our beds at the Hôtel de la Haute Forêt. (This is a good place for a French lesson. When you see the carrot-shaped accent mark - the circonflexe - over a vowel, usually an s has dropped out of the language. Thus, you can easily figure out what those words mean in English by adding an s. I guess in the case of the the word hôtel, we also say hotel in English, not hostel. But you get the idea.)

Tuesday, March 6: That morning, we stopped back at my house for me to grab one last thing before we left for good. We got on the road right away, as we had a long, uneventful drive ahead of us. Our next major city after Nantes would be Bordeaux. On the way there, we took a short detour west to the Dune de Pylat, an enormous dune on the Atlantic Ocean. We all started to climb the dune, but as the wind began to pick up about halfway through, our moms decided to head back down. Laura and I continued and almost got blown away. Literally, our umbrellas turned inside out. We almost couldn't make it to the top, because there were sand particles just flying at us. Once up there, we were so glad that we had persevered. The view was amazing - dense forest to one side, and the ocean to the other. Unfortunately, I was unable to capture the amazingness of the view because of the sand. I did get a couple of photos, at least.

On our way back from the Dune de Pylat, we stumbled upon a sign directing us to something to do with Montesquieu. I don't remember anymore what was on the sign, but I was so excited, because I had really wanted to go see Montesquieu's house, but I had forgotten to look online to see where it was. So we decided to follow the signs and see if we would end up at Montesquieu's house. After a half hour, we arrived at our destination: a huge industrial complex named "Montesquieu." Rats! We had gone out of our way for nothing. Laura got a picture of the complex anyway, and we continued on toward Toulouse, the next major city. (Notice that we didn't actually stop in Bordeaux. It's not really a huge point of interest, especially on a limited schedule. We actually ended up doing the same thing with a lot of the major cities, because we found that we wasted a considerable amount of time driving around and then ended up seeing things - like cathedrals - that tended to be pretty similar between major cities.) Upon arriving in Agen, a town about halfway between Bordeaux and Toulouse, night had already begun to fall, and we had no idea where we were going to stay. There tend to be a lot of cheap chain hotels near the autoroute in France, so we drove around somewhat aimlessly, stopping at several of them to see if there were any rooms left for the night, which there weren't. These annoying excursions would recur regularly throughout the rest of our trip. I didn't mind it so much, but the moms rightfully felt differently, after full days of driving. Finally, one of the hotels told us to check at the B&B across the way. B&B doesn't mean bed and breakfast; it was actually the name of the motel chain. We ended up staying there for the night and payed practically nothing for a clean and modern, though not spacious, room that housed all four of us.

Wednesday, March 7: The B&B being a somewhat Americanized motel, it had more of an American-style continental breakfast (though it still included all the elements of a French breakfast), which means that I got to eat my cereal! My still-weak stomach was pretty happy about that. We set out for another day of driving, passing by Toulouse, known as the Ville Rose (Pink City). Although we didn't enter the city, we were able to see the thing for which it is most well known, its distinctive pink-toned brick. We continued on to Carcassone, a major tourist attraction. Just to give you an idea of where we are geographically, Carcassonne is located in south central France, not too far from the border with Spain. Carcassonne is another walled city, which was fortified by the Romans around 100 BC. Isn't that crazy to think of? That just seems like such a long time ago. My picture doesn't do it justice, but it is an accurate representation of what it looked like that day, since it was gray and actually started pouring after we got inside.

To protect her expensive photography equipment from the downpour, Laura buttoned her jacket over it, which made it look like she had a little camera on the way.

The inside of Carcassonne is pretty touristy, as, like a lot of these old Roman structures, it was rebuilt. Although that makes for a less authentic experience, it nevertheless allows you to see what things would have looked like back when they were first built.

After leaving Carcassonne, a little disappointed because of the rain, we headed for our sleeping spot for that night, Montpellier. As Laura had savvily picked up a booklet listing all the B&B locations throughout France the night before, we were able to head straight there and avoid the hotel-hopping scenario.

Thursday, March 8: This morning, we headed to one of my personal favorites, Nîmes (since I'm writing this later, I can point out that Julien, the winner of this year's Nouvelle Star competition, is from Nîmes).

After a pleasant walk through town, we headed to the main attraction, a Roman ampitheatre dating to the first century AD. The arènes, as it is known, was the site of gladiator competitions, and, to this day, bull fights (Nîmes is the bull-fighting capital of France).

After an informative and interesting audio guide tour, we headed for the Tour Magne. We heard about the tower while buying our tickets at the arènes and thought we'd stop by. Unfortunately, the road leading up to the tower was blocked by a moving truck. There would be no getting through. Since we weren't very committed to getting to the tower, the rest of the group thought we could move on. I convinced them to try getting there anyway by an alternate route. Since we knew the tower was on the top of a hill overlooking the city, we knew that we'd have to drive up. After 30 minutes of fruitless driving, my mom had had enough. Everyone would have been happy to just skip it, but I was feeling extra ambitious and was able to talk them into one more try. I don't really know why, but I really wanted to get to that tower. Rosemary took over driving, and we gave it another whirl. After making our way through the narrowest streets any of us have ever seen (I'm talking about driving between two walls and pulling in our side mirrors), we actually made it to the tower. After climbing the three hundred or so steps and seeing the view, everyone forgot about the long, frustrating drive. Aren't you glad I talked you guys into that? Come on, how many times do you get to go to Nîmes?

Halfway between Nîmes and Avignon is the famous Pont du Gard. This enormous three-tiered aqueduct, built by the Romans 2,000 years ago, supplied water to the city of Nîmes. This thing was really impressive. And what's more, thanks to Rosemary, my former science teacher, I finally came to understand exactly how an aqueduct works - I think I just needed to see one!

That night, we stayed in Aix-en-Provence. After one of those annoying driving around experiences, we ended up in a Villages Hotel, since we weren't able to find the B&B. As we found out later, the Villages Hotel was the B&B. They were in the process of changing all the Villages Hotels over to B&B's, the tricksters.