Normandy Road Trip: Mont St. Michel and Saint-Malo

Today got off to an auspicious start -- as we were nearing Mont Saint Michel we realized that I had left my credit card back at the hotel in Bayeux. A swift wave of panic was followed by a reassuring phone call; the hotel still had the card.  Whew! At least we didn't have to report it lost or stolen. Stress level: Low to Medium.

The abbey of Mont Saint Michel is an impressive feat of medieval engineering. It was built on a rocky island about a half mile off the coast and heavily fortified to ward off invasion from the sea. In medieval times, pilgrims would wait for the tide to go out and walk across the sand to worship at the abbey. There is now a causeway (and a brand-new bridge) that allows you to walk to the abbey from the mainland without getting your feet wet.

Although it's a world heritage site run by the state, the abbey is also a place of worship.  We saw several nuns and members of the clergy going about their daily routine.

After touring through the abbey, we sat outside with a picnic lunch and enjoyed a view of the sea.  Stress level: Low.

From Mont Saint Michel, we drove to the town of Saint-Malo in Brittany.  The heart of Saint-Malo is a walled city center, called La Ville Intra-Muros.  This section of the town looks like something out of a storybook.  Thanks to the 12 meter (36 foot) tides, a huge beach stretches outward from the town ramparts.

Our hotel is located in the center of the Intra-Muros.  As we started following the GPS directions down the twisty one-way streets (there is not a single two-lane street inside the walls), the streets successively narrowed.  At one point we literally squeezed the car through the tables of a streetside cafe.  Several diners scowled at us, making us second-guess our directions...were we even on a street for cars????  It was at this point that the GPS lost its signal (thanks, fortified stone walls!) and we were left scratching our heads.  Stress level: Very High.

Kevin wisely decided to park even though we were blocking a street.  We asked around and found our hotel.  The lady at reception said "No problem, yes of course you are allowed to drive on the streets here".  She then provided a map to where we should park (just outside the city walls) and after plowing through more throngs of vacationers, we finally pulled into the lot and heaved a sigh of relief.  Stress level: not horrible, nothing a glass of wine couldn't fix.

This is the street our hotel is on.  See that archway down at the end of the street?  That's how cars exit the walled city (there's a similar entrance further down the wall).  It is just barely big enough for one car to fit through.

For dinner, we walked around the town looking for crepes.  We didn't have to look very hard, since every single restaurant in town seems to specialize in crepes.  We chose one near our hotel, and ordered the "formule" which is a 3-course meal with appetizer, main, and dessert.  The formule we ordered was listed as containing several specialties of the Brittany region.  First up, an appetizer of a galette (buckwheat crepe) topped with butter and a sausage link.  Not great, but not bad.  For the main course we had a choice between two kinds of crepes: I took the galette de sarrasin bretonnes au boudin noir, while Kevin got the galette with andouille de guéméné.  We didn't have a real clear idea of what was in them, but we thought, "when in Rome...", right?

Our plates arrived and it turns out that "boudin noir" is black pudding (aka blood sausage).  I had eaten it before but never in such copious quantities -- my crepe was pretty much a black pudding burrito!  If you've never seen it, blood sausage is very unattractive to look at.  How was I going to eat an entire plate full?  Ack.  Kevin's entree contained a normal-looking crepe topped with three huge cross-section slices of a foul-smelling sausage, and it was shaped into concentric circles which we puzzled over for a few minutes...did they flatten and roll the sausage to make it have so many layers?  Very weird. 

Eyes closed, I choked down a few bites of mine and Kevin attempted a first bite of his.  After chewing for a minute, he stopped and said simply "This is not...good."  He was able to hide one of the pieces under his salad, and did his best to eat around the rest.  After a little while, he just looked at me and said, "I can't.  I can't eat any more of this, it's the worst thing I've ever eaten.  Ever."  Now, Kevin is not a picky eater, so when he says this, you know it's bad.  I offered to switch but after taking one bite of his meal, I realized that my blood pudding crepe was like 100 times better tasting than what he had.  It was truly, truly vile.

We looked around the dining room and saw everyone finishing off all the food on their plates.  Another couple had both ordered the andouille and were chowing down with great gusto (They were locals, probably.  Or maybe they just didn't have tastebuds or a sense of smell).  Meanwhile, we sat there with nearly full plates trying to figure out how on earth we were going to get the waitress to take away the plates without offending the chef.  Stress level: through the roof.

Finally, after pushing the food around enough to make it look like we'd eaten, the waitress approached.  We did our best to look happy and told her it was all very good but that we were starting to get full and wanted to save room for dessert.  She bought our "crazy Americans" act and took away the offensive remains of the meal.  Thank god for dessert crepes, at least those tasted like we expected!

When we got back to the hotel, I googled what the heck "andouille de guéméné" is.  If you are easily grossed out, stop reading here.  Here's a link that explains it: Andouille de Guemene.  I love that the first sentence is "Brittany Andouille de Guémené is a pork speciality that may surprise your palate!"  Indeed.  It is basically the large intestines of a pig.  Several pigs, in fact.  The reason for all those concentric circles?  They stuff intestine after intestine inside each other (up to 25 of them).  And THEN, they dry it for 9 months before cooking it slowly in soup made with hay.  HAY!!!!  Just writing this paragraph makes me gag.  Stress level: still high.  Desire to ever eat anything again: very, very low.