What a great day, (18th May) we headed of early to visit the Abbey of Mont St Michel, a very imposing place built on a rocky island that is totally surrounded by water at high tide. The building was thought to have started around 708AD and became a Benedictine Abbey in the 10th century and was added to over the next 500 yrs. It was the only place in France to resist all the assaults by the English over 100 year war, so it is regarded as a symbol of national identity. Built by people of the middle ages it is incredible how they achieved such a grand undertaking.
We spent the day winding up and down stairs and around narrow cobbled streets. We had rest with a beer now and again, there are several restaurants on the Abbey and a few really bad taste tourist shops, we couldn't work out why one shop was selling Japanese swords, why here in this part of France? until the tour buses arrived, we reckon every second bus was full of Japanese tourists.
We traveled home via the town of Avaranches, a nice town and quite large, perched high on the escarpment, you can tell all the important towns from the middle ages because they are built with a commanding view over the surrounding countryside. Avaranches was the headquarters for General Patton who commanded the American breakout (when they were surrounded by the Germans) during July 1944. The town has a big connection with America and Canada.
St Hiliare markets were the go for Wed (19th May), they are the largest around the district and are full of local produce, this was a real farmers market along with some interesting food stalls and clothing etc, not trash and treasure like the last markets. Stalls were selling veggies, meat including venison, rabbits, ducks either live or freshly prepared. You could buy live day old chicks and ducks, geese and laying hens, tractors and farm implements. Some of the more interesting food was Moroccan couscous with lamb and veggies, Spanish paella that came as a take away in a big container full of rice, chicken, prawns and mussels and of course crepes by the cart full.
Crepes are a way of life over here, they are the ultimate french fast food. You can buy them everywhere, anytime. The favourite is with what they describe as chocolate but is actually Nutella, you know the chocolate hazelnut spread, they eat tons of this stuff, in the supermarkets you see a whole section just for Nutella it comes in 2KG size buckets! Anyway crepes come with sugar, Nutella or different fruit jams.
If a sweet crepe is not your thing then you can always opt for a Gallette, a savoury crepe but the batter is made with buckwheat flour so it looks a light tan colour instead of the vanilla colour of a crepe. Gallettes come with ham, cheese, eggs, mushrooms, sausage and mustard. My favourite goes something like this, "Bonjour madame, un gallette with saussion and moutarde, siv vous plais". Yum I end up with a 10inch pork sausage covered in dijon mustard all wrapped up in a savoury crepe, all I need now is a beer, no problem there is a bar on just about every corner! Bon Apetite.
The next day was spent further afield, we traveled about 100KM to a big town called Alencon in the eastern part of southern Normandy. Alencon is famous for its lace making over the last few centuries. I should point out at this point that the national highway system in France is pretty good all roads are numbered and if you plan you trip using road numbers you can't go wrong, the only problem is that the highways go right through the middle of each and every hamlet, village and town so even though you can travel at 90km/hr every 3 to 5 km you have to slow down to 50km/hr to pass through all these towns! this makes you average speed around 50-60km/hr, so the 100KM trip to Alencon took us 1hr and 50mins. Alencon was OK but not as nice as other towns we have visited if it wasn't for a stop the medieval town of Domfront then the day would have been disappointing.
Domfront still has remains of a 1000yr old castle and most of the surrounding old town survived the bombing during WW2. It was pretty interesting and was a nice way to break the journey to Alencon.
Our next plans are to meet up with my cousin Janette and her family who lives in Brittany, a region of France that is about 2-3hrs drive from us. We haven't seen each other for probably 40 yrs!!!. So that's it for now, be back in a few days.
