I write this in our room at the Hotel Astrid in Caen, France. (I highly recommend it, BTW).

The ferry ride was splendid. It was the Pont-Aven, a new (2004) ferry, and the nicest I’d ever ridden. It felt like a small cruise ship, with many fine appointments and wonderful cabins. Granted, the only other ferries I’d ridden were the Newfoundland ferries… not the most modern fleet in the world. Still, it was a great boat ride,
with a pleasant night’s sleep.

We awoke in St-Malo, France. A cute little town where we had breakfast before getting our car and heading east to see le Mont-St-Michel. It’s a very old and quite magnificent abbey built on a tidal island you access via a 2 mile causeway. It’s quite a climb of steps, but worth it. Look it up on google images and you’ll find far better pictures than the ones I took (it was a cloudy, somwhat rainy day). We grabbed some postcards to mail from Paris.

We spent the afternoon driving across the countryside in our Opel Corsa, to Caen. Caen is a little urban center in the country, very nice. but not much fun to drive in during rush hour. Frankly, I’m glad to be ditching the car and getting back to our usual M.O. of train and foot.

Shortly, we’ll drop off the car and catch a train to Paris. How long we’ll spend in Paris is still an open question. I expect at least 2 nights, but we’ll decide before we get there.

The light packing has gone well, and so far I’ve done one wash of socks and underwear in London. But we’ll soon need to do a real load since I’ve one clean shirt left. I suspect we’ll be looking for a laundry in Paris as one of our first tasks.

On to Paris!