aujourd'hui, je suis allée à marseilles en tgv.
the train broke halfway to avignon, but i got an extra hour of sleep.
tomorrow i am going to cassis to hike along "les calanques" to morgiou. it's rated "hard" at 15km with many steep ascents and descents. wheeee! hopefully it won't take me longer than the predicted 5-6 hours.
and war, if you don't hear from me by thursday afternoon, send out a search party. ;)
friday afternoon, nicki and i drove to giverny to see monet's garden. i even got to drive her peugeot 205 from giverny to just past caen!
the funny thing about seeing monet's garden was that we didn't actually see it the first time around. we got distracted by the american museum of art's garden and its colour-themed mini-gardens. 3.5 rolls later (between the two of us), we were walking along the street and realized that monet's house and gardens were further up the street and already closed. oops!
so we drove on towards mont st. michel where we had booked a b&b. stopped briefly for pizza and salad in a town just outside of caen (i think?) and took some pictures of mont st. michel at night before settling down for the night at our very cute and convenient b&b, Les Vielles Digues.
saturday was spent wandering around mont st. michel, toured the abbey, buying lots of postcards, eating a seafood lunch at a local restaurant, and then we headed to the picturesque walled city of st. malo. much shopping later (and the yummiest apple desserts where half an apple is baked in a mini pie shell), we drove to dinard to see some "crashing waves" but alas the weather was too calm.
we headed back to mont st. michel for the night (since i had left my sunglasses at the restaurant at lunch) but all the restaurants were "complet" because of all the tours and a wedding party. aie. so instead, we had yummy fish soup and crème brûlée after running back to a tavern/restaurant that had told us earlier it would be a half hour wait for a table.
whew. this entry is getting long.
after stopping to photograph a fully lit windmill, we made our way to juilley where we had booked a different b&b run by a very elderly couple.
sunday morning, we took the picturesque route back to giverny, stopping for cider and baked goods. (yum!) after successfully navigating monet's house and gardens (we preferred the american museum gardens, but the lily pond was pretty neat) we made good time back to fontainebleau, despite a couple of minor traffic setbacks.
and that was our eventful trip to normandy and back. pictures will be up as soon as i get back to vancouver.
à bientôt!
je suis en france.
this time, my flight to paris was not fraught with alcohol-induced fainting. but after experiencing air canada's breakfasts and dinners, i'm convinced i prefer flying british airways. :P
my first day was spent navigating the RER and metro as i had to check my bag at gare de lyon while i played tourist. i went to montmartre to see le sacre coeur and the weather was beeeeootiful. unfortunately the hordes of people didn't inspire me to take many photos.
i managed to navigate my way to la musée picasso after taking the funicular from the top of sacre coeur (not really worth it, but i wanted to compare it to the hk funicular which was pretty awesome). i still feel weird about taking photos in museums, even though it seems to be a fairly common thing to do, but that could be because my extremely noisy nikon attracts more attention than i would like.
getting from paris' gare de lyon to fontainbleau-avon was pretty easy after i figured out where the baggage check was (i got all confused and thought it was on a different floor). nicki and i had yummy crêpes for dinner and then email for dessert. ;)