Normandy - Mont-St-Michel, American Cemetery, Bayeux, Caen, Rouen

I've seen pictures of Mont-Saint-Michel (MSM) many times.  It has been my goal to visit the landmark someday.  It's one of the most popular and well-visited tourist sites in France.  But getting there by public transportation is not easy.  That's why I rented a car to visit MSM and other places in the region of Normandy.  You can read about all the reasons why you should visit Normandy here.  

MSM is almost straight north of Bordeaux.  It takes about 6 hours to drive there.  It is a beautiful drive through the countryside, through narrow roads and small towns.  I found a Best Western hotel at a very reasonable rate (about US$82 a night) about 10 minutes from MSM.  That's where we are heading - the Best Western (BW) Hotel Montgomery in Pontorson.  The hotel is located on the main street of this very small town.  It is in a building that is (we were told) about 150 years.  We were greeted by the friendly owner of the hotel and shown our room on the 3rd floor.  After checking in we walked through town, basically the main street, to look for someplace to eat.  Most of the places were closed.  We found a Middle-eastern restaurant that you see all over Europe.  They sell Donker Kebab with fries.  We were happy just to have a nice warm dinner.  

In the morning we had a very nice breakfast at the hotel.  It costs 15€ but it was worth it, not having to go out and hunt for a place that's opened.  A cup of coffee would've cost 3-5€.  It's only about a 10-minute drive to MSM.  You park your car at a big parking lot and a shuttle will take you to MSM.  MSM is a town on an island, with a monastery on top.  It has a long history, dating back to the 6th century.  If you are interested to know about its history, there are many sources of information available.  

We were dropped off in front of MSM.  From there we entered the town and walked through narrow streets with shops on both sides.  The streets curves around the island.  Near the top we showed our tickets to get into the monastery part of the island.

A Distant View of Mont-Saint-Michel

A Closer Look

Narrow Streets 

A Faucet Outside the Abbey

Part of the Outside of the Abbey

The Sanctuary

Looking out from the Abbey

Before visiting MSM I thought the entire island is the monastery or Abbey.  The island is the town of MSM and the monastery sits on top of the town.

Our next destination is another important landmark - the Normandy American Cemetery and Memorial at Colleville-sur-Mer.  It's about a 2-hour drive from MSM, again through the beautiful French countryside and farms.  If you've seen anyWorld War II (WWII) movie or picture of the fighting in Europe, you'd have seen scenes of this area.  My lasting memory of this area is the movie "The Longest Day."  I was a teenager in the 60s' when I saw this movie and I never forgot the lasting impression of the war.  The focus of the movie is to tell the story of the Normandy Landings of the Allied forces on the beaches that eventually turn the war in the Allied forces favor.  The cemetery is on a bluff overlooking Omaha Beach and the English Channel.  This is the scene of one of the heaviest fighting among the Normandy landings.

Entrance to the Information Center

An Obstacle to the landing

The Memorial with a Reflecting Pool

9,388 American military are buried here

A closer look at the tombstones

Omaha Beach and the English Channel

About thirty minutes from the Cemetery is a small town called Bayeux.  We are headed here because we want to see the famous Bayeux Tapestry.  It was said to be made in the 11th century, telling the story of the Norman conquest of English led by William, the Duke of Normandy challenging Harold II, the King of England.  We were not allowed to take pictures of the actual tapestry.  We had to take pictures of the replicas at the gift shop.

Entrance to the Museum

Replica of the Tapestry

Replica of the Tapestry

Cathedral at Bayeux

Bayeux is a small town so we decided to stay at the Best Western Le Moderne in Caen.  It was dark by the time we made the trip.  It took us a while to find the hotel because it was almost hidden behind some buildings.  We even went to the wrong BW just around the corner.  Eventually, we unloaded our luggage and were told to park in a garage under the park across the street.  We had a nice French dinner at the Le Royal restaurant across the park.  Staying at the BW hotel entitled us to a 10% discount at the restaurant.

Caen and the surrounding areas saw a lot of fighting between the Allied forces and the Germans in WWII.  Much of the city was destroyed during the war and most of the buildings were completely rebuilt.  We took a walk around the city in the morning and it seems most of the people we saw are young.  That's because the Université de Caen is located here.

St John's Church

Ramp to Le Château de Caen

View of St. John's Church from Le Château de Caen

Another View from Caen Castle

A Building destroyed during the War

The Abbey of Sainte-Trinité

There are many places we could have gone after Caen.  But we wanted to be close enough to Paris so that we don't have to drive too far on our last day.  We thought of Honfleur, a seaside town very well written up.  Unfortunately, it was going to be raining almost the entire day the next day.  Eventually, we decided to go to Rouen, which will put us about a 2-hour drive from Paris.  From the photos and write-ups it looked a beautiful old city.

We arrived in Rouen after about a 90-minute drive under a light rain.  The hotel is right across from the train station.  After checking in we walked around the neighborhood to find some food.  Nothing looked too appetizing. There's the usual fast food places.  Then we saw a place that looked like an Asian grocery store.  We walked in and saw that the shop sells some Asian food.  We decided to buy some and take them back to the hotel to eat.  We couldn't go too far because of the rain.

Asian Grocery Store

Vietnamese Spring rolls and other Asian food

After breakfast the next morning we started our drive back to Paris.  Originally, we were going to stop in Giverny, where Claude Monet's former home was and is now a museum.  Unfortunately, they had just closed for the season at the end of October.  

It was a Sunday so driving back to Paris was quite smooth.  The biggest challenge was navigating the roundabout at the Arc de Triomphe.  There are 11 roads feeding into the roundabout.  At some point you have to stop to let cars from another road enter the roundabout.  At the same time you have to make sure you exit at the right road.  In the end we made it to Gare du Nord.  Fortunately, the car rental company left us instructions on how to enter the garage.  We enter a down ramp through a side road.  There is a steel door that is closed but as you approach, it opens.  We have to drive down 7 levels of spiraling down ramp.  Finally, we found the Alamo car rental folks and returned the car at 2:30pm.

Then we walked on rue la Lafayette to the Best Western Anjou Lafayette Opera, where we stayed for another 3 nights.  During this time we took a Batobus River Cruise on the Seine, visited the Musée d'Orsay, Montmartre and Sacre Couer.  We were going to try some Crepes in Montmartre but ended up eating dinner at a restaurant where our waiter happened to speak Cantonese and was originally from Cambodia.