Well, this post is really long in coming as this trip was two weeks ago, but I figured better late than never. After a restful nights sleep after visiting St. Malo, I rose early and was greeted with a very nun-like breakfast of coffee and a piece of bread. Small, but enough to tide me over. While waiting for the others, I took a little walk and ended up in a dog park that had a trail leading down to the water. I only had a few minutes so I ran down the roughly seventy steps and landed on this little inlet beach surrounded by scraggly black rocks and moss covered oak trees. In the early morning with the sun just coming up, it was a very cool place to be.
Almost as soon as I took these pictures I had to run back up to meet the bus and got there just in time to not be the last one on. We then took an extremely scenic drive along the coast to Mont St. Michel. That is one of the top bird watching areas due to its location along migration routes, and there were tons of some of the biggest bird flocks I've ever seen flying in unison and undulating in all directions while somehow not running into each other. This area is also known for its fuites de mer (shellfish) and especially les huîtres (oysters), and thus we passed many, many oyster farms and these amphibious harvesting vehicles to accommodate for the extreme tides that make using a boat near impossible or at least highly impractical.
Because there are no cars on Mont St. Michel, we parked the bus and walked for about forty minutes to the island on the narrow causeway that connects it to the mainland. It is one of the most surreal places that I've ever been because you are completely surrounded by a flat estuary and right in the middle is this truly ginormous island.
Almost the whole group on the causeway
(adding a filter instantly improves bad photos, I'm in love!)
When we finally arrived, we wound our way up the only street and then climbed even more stairs that just kept going with seemingly no end until we finally reached the main level of the cathedral. It was definitely another one of those cool places with tons of nooks and crannies, stones worn with centuries of use, and little green plants and moss growing out of every available piece of dirt. Our audio guides, which we now have the ability to understand [!!!], led us around all the little rooms and narrow stairways. From each little window the view was absolutely amazing and you could see for miles.
I would like this door for Christmas please.
We were really lucky to be able to see it at high tide as all previous APA groups have only seen it at low tide where pretty much all of this water is gone and replaced with mudflats. After the tour, we took the shuttle back to where we would be having lunch. It was extremely good and we all got a taste of the local specialty.
It took a minute or two to warm up to the idea of eating a raw oyster, but with pinky out and one big gulp I managed to get it down. It wasn't as bad as I thought it would be, but it also wasn't something I look forward to repeating. It was super salty and chewy and surprisingly it didn't taste like mud or dead fish like I had expected, but as it turns out, I'm allergic to them and spent the rest of the trip home trying to stop my mouth from itching. After my French oyster experience, I had the most amazing dish of agneau de pré-salé wrapped in a pastry dough. Agneau de pré-salé, or salt meadow lamb, is a local delicacy made from sheep that have been raised on marsh grasses and herbs that have a high salt content because of their closeness to the ocean which gives the meat a distinctive taste that left me begging for more. Courtesy of my host-mom, I have been eating a lot of lamb lately, so I was actually able to taste the subtle difference between regular lamb and this kind, and now know why it is so coveted.
With tired feet and full stomachs, we headed back to Paris where I know we all slept very well! I absolutely love our outings together where we get to spend some time together not worrying about school and just enjoying being foreigners in a beautiful country.
Much love to all of you back home!
-Kate Alice
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