The area around Yoyo’s home is mostly farmland. When we got up and everyone was getting ready Wes & I walked around outside. The field behind their house was being planted. There was a tractor puling a small flatbed that had 3 to 4 people on it. As it drove slowly down the rows these people were leaning over and putting young plants into the rows that had been plowed. This is probably how most of the smaller farms do it here.
Thierry said his brother wants to be a farmer and loves this area of France. Yoyo is younger than Thierry, a bit taller but you can tell they are brothers. Both Yoyo & Delphine are in the Navy. Delphine is pregnant with a baby girl that is due in early fall. They are going to name her Lylou which is the name of a famous French person. Yoyo has a son from prior marriage, 4 years old Kylian. He wasn’t with his dad this weekend.
For breakfast we had homemade bread and jam and then headed out for the day
The City of San-Malo
Our first stop around lunchtime was at a fortified city, San-Malo. This is a rather large city that is on the ocean and is completely walled. We walked out through a gateway onto the beach to walk out to a fort. It sits up on an island that during high tide is not reachable except by boat. We didn’t go inside the fort as there was a fee.
We had a picnic lunch on the beach before heading to Mont St Michel.
Mia and Ethan at San-Malo
Yoyo and Delphine at San-Malo
After we had our lunch of sandwiches we made from the cheeses, sausages and pates from the market we stopped at yesterday we looked for a restroom before heading out. Restrooms throughout the cities are pay toilets. They cost 30 cents to unlock. When you are finished you hit a button to unlock the door to leave. And before the next person can enter the door locks because the whole inside sprays to disinfect everything so the next person has a clean restroom. I expected to not have a toilet paper as it would be wet. But it’s under a cover and it was dry.
Mont Saint Michel is so tall that after we came out of a hilly forest you can see it from quite a distance.
This is the 2nd most visited place in all of France, the 1st is the Eiffel tower. They began building it in 700 and it has changed many times to what it is now. It used to be impassible during high tide but they have built up a road to the island. You still leave your vehicles in a parking lot and walk to the island. I left the road and walked alongside the water edge to take photos. It was hard walking as the ground very slick and also sticky too. Reading about Mont St Michel they talk about people being stuck in quicksand outside the city walls and drowning as the tide comes in. Yikes.
This is an incredible place but very crowded. There were many tour buses so not only were there all the people from the parking lot but all these tour groups. When I went into the main gateway I had planned on hopefully making it all the way up to the cathedral. It’s quite a climb up there but I figured I had time. We were going to be here about 4 to 5 hours but once I got through the gateway I gave it up.
There were so many people and the street was so narrow I could only shuffle along with the crush of people going in. It was worse than Disneyland on a crowded holiday weekend. There was also another crush of people going out on the opposite side of the street. It looked just awesome and I found out later from Mia & Thierry that it did thin out if I had just kept going. They made it all the way to the top and said the cathedral was incredible.
I went to the other side of the city and went in through a different gateway that was much less crowded.
I walked up a ways to see the views but hadn’t ran into Wes or the kids. We’ve been breaking away so we can take photos and the kids do their thing and then we meet up later.
I later found the kids and not too much longer we connected up with Wes. The little ones were getting really tired as we had been on the go all day.
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