Pining for the Fjords

In Part 13 of the blog posts about France, we arrived safe and sound in Mont Saint-Michel (MSM), had an alfresco dinner on our dark, wet terrace, and wandered around the island before collapsing into sleep. Us at MSM in the daylight! It was a good thing we'd gone to bed early the night before, as the monks started ringing the abbey bells (as you saw in the last blog's pictures, the abbey isn't that far from every hotel room on the island) promptly at 7am.  If France had multiple time zones, MSM would surely be in a different one from Paris, as it's a good 5 hours west, so it was still pitch black outside when the bells began.  I looked at my phone to see it was 7am, but the bells didn't stop tolling with just 7 - oh no.  They went 10 times, 15 times, 20 times - eventually, a very confused husband popped his head up from the pillow next to me and went, "what time IS it?"  From our best guess, we figured the abbey residents were being called to La...

In Part 12 of the France blogs, we spent some time in solemn reflection at the American D-Day sites on the Normandy coast. Mont Saint-Michel, in all of its after dark glory After we finished up at Pointe du Hoc, we started the final push in the car to Mont Saint-Michel (MSM from this point on).  We initially planned to arrive in MSM a bit earlier in the day, but time got away from us, so our arrival at the designated car park didn't happen until close to 6:30.  Thankfully, it was still fairly light when we made it, and we could clearly see where we were headed. Driving toward MSM. "I see it!  I see it!" We are not in Paris any longer Since we weren't in high tourist season, we knew most eating establishments would close down before we got there, so as I mentioned in our last Paris blog, we'd brought the fixin's for a picnic, with one notable exception - we still needed to find a baguette!  While we were barreling along the cou...