Road Trip through Western France
After our 3 days in Prague, we flew back to Charles de Galle airport and met up with two friends, Nick and Becky, for a short road trip around western France. Since living in France from 2008–09, I had only been back once with my mom (we also did a road trip, from Paris to Florence) but on all of my trips, I had never been to Mont-Saint-Michel! When discussing trip plans with Nick and Becky we discovered that all four of us hadn’t been there, so it became stop #1.
We drove from Paris to Les Mans, where Nick and Charlie spent a few hours touring the museum while Becky and I relaxed and caught up. Unfortunately, there wasn’t much more to see than the museum, but I know the boys had fun learning about the history of Les Mans and being in the area. Our timing for the day was off, so we stopped in a grocery store for some sandwiches.
We then headed to Pontorson, a village a few miles from Mont-Saint-Michel, where we spent the night in a charming (probably haunted) Best Western. We had planned to drive to the parking lot for MSM in the morning and take the shuttle, but at the encouragement of the hotel concierge we rented bikes from the hotel and rode the 5-ish miles to island! It was one of the coolest bike rides I think I’ve ever done and felt great to get some more exercise in during our trip!
The actual tour of Mont-Saint-Michel was really cool, and I’m glad that we finally were able to go there! We got there early in the day, on one of the first shuttles from the bike parking area across the bridge/roadway. We took a back route up to the top of the island, where the monastery sits and wandered the building for about an hour. My favorite part was looking down over the Saint Aubert chapel, which sits below the monastery. While looking over it, you can admire the rush of the tide as it fills the basin below the island!
On our way back from Mont-Saint-Michel, we stopped in a grocery store to pick up provisions, and then headed towards Rochefort-en-Terre, our next stop! Along the way, we pulled off of the road for a lakeside picnic on Combourg, enjoying a little fresh air and a break from the drive, as well as shared our Czech beers from the Beer Spa Bernard.
A few more hours and we arrived in Malansac, near Rochefort-en-Terre. We stayed at a resort-type place called Domaine du Moulin Neuf, where these small cottages surround a gorgeous lake in the French countryside. While it was a beautiful area, it was SO quiet! We went over to Rochefort-en-Terre in search of a restaurant for dinner at about 6:30 PM, and we couldn’t find anything that was open! We ended up at a great restaurant nearby, where the host who was from Nice remarked on how quiet the region was and how there were essentially no restaurants besides his that were open in the summer and late enough for dinner — wild!
The final day of our road trip, we drove to Vannes for lunch; this medieval town still has many of the original walls, churches and cobblestone streets. Despite it being a sort of gross day with rain, we enjoyed walking around the town (quite touristy!), had a tasty lunch of Moules-Frites, grabbed some crepes for the road, and headed to Redon to catch our train to Paris!
