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Published: August 31st 2008
Paris
The Eiffel Tower, with the Peace Monument in front of it.To start... yes, Mt. St. Michel is as fantastic as I was promised. Just to get that out of the way.
So... when I last left off I was about to head back to Paris for a night. This time we got into Paris a little earlier than our first time. It was still pretty much nighttime, so we decided we might as well head over to the Eiffel Tower again. This time we did a little better though, and climbed the 400ft. up to the second floor (yes, that's right, we took the stairs). This would be one of the things the title refers to as not disappointing. The view was amazing - the whole city lit up for miles in front of us, sights like the Arc de Triomphe, Sacre-Couer, and Notre Dame were all easy to spot. When I realized we had been up there for an hour already I couldn't believe it - it felt more like 15 minutes. I could have spent all night there. We elected not to take the lift all the way to the top, we didn't think the lights would be as cool from 900ft. It was definitely a strange feeling
Paris
The Peace Monument, in the Parc du Champ de Mars. going back down though... when we reached the bottom I felt very grounded, like after jumping on a trampoline and getting off and finding you can't really jump anymore. It just felt like everything was a lot less cool from ground level than 400ft. up.
We went to our hostel and crashed after that, then were up around 5:30am so we could catch the first train out to Mt. St. Michel. A little background for those who don't know: Mt. St. Michel is an island abbey/fortress/monastery along the North coast of France. The whole island is probably only a few hundred meters in diameter, but the spires of the abbey rise up a few hundred meters as well - very impressive. As we were taking the bus from the nearby town out to the island, we could see it rising up in the distance against the cloudy background. We arrived and explored all the walls built up for defenses on our way up to the abbey. I read that during the Hundred Years' War, even when all of Normandy and Brittany was occupied by the English they were unable to take Mt. St. Michel. I'd believe it... it's the
Paris
View of the Parc from the Tower perfect fortress. The abbey on top was very cool as well - the town is over a thousand years old, and you can just feel the age in the architecture and stones everywhere.
The one bad thing about the island though, would definitely have to be the tourists. On our way down from the abbey, it was often hard to walk through the jam-packed streets. It would have been nice to be there at night instead, when we could have had more solitude. Oh well, it was still awesome. We had hoped to explore the mudflats around the island as well, but it turns out they were... well, muddy, as Josh discovered. We were trying to find a dry way out when out of nowhere he just slipped on the groud and completely fell over, in the process getting completely covered in mud. He took it pretty well though, better than I would have I think. We had hoped to see the tide come in as well, but we had to leave before that happened. The tide around Mt. St. Michel moves in at a rate of about 2ft. per second, which would have been cool to see. When
Paris
View of the Seine River and the heart of Paris from the Tower. the tide's out, the "island" is just surrounded by mud, but when it's in it is an actual island.
From Mt. St. Michel we had a looooong train ride that went overnight to the town of Annecy, on the Eastern side of France. Once again, it didn't disappoint. We arrived at 7 in the morning, grabbed some breakfast from a bakery, and on a hunch headed for the lake. Mountains (start of the Alps) line the far side of the lake from Annecy, and the sun hadn't yet risen over the mountains. So we sat on a lakeside bench and ate our pastries as the sun rose over the mountains. It was probably one of my favorite moments so far... especially considering my love of sunrises. Amazingly, the day probably got even better from there. We took a boat to a town across the lake and started a hike to the neighboring town, crossing something called the Roc de Chére along the way. About 1.5 hours later, we found the Roc to be the top of a giant cliff that overlooked the whole lake. I don't really have the vocabulary to describe the view, but it was incredible. The
Paris
Arc de Triomphe from the Tower. lake is soooo blue - I made the remark that the lake was actually bluer than the sky. I've never seen anything like it. And all along the lake, stretching as far as you can see, the Alps fade into a haze. It felt like we weren't really looking at the scene - it was too perfect. It was more like a postcard or something instead of actually being there.
That night we had our one real dinner in France (we'll do the same in Italy, limiting ourselves to one), and I really enjoyed it. Salad, a seafood salad thing, and then a meat and potatoe main course. Kristin liked hers a lot too, although it was definitely too much food for her. Unfortunately Josh ordered seafood for one course, which he apparently doesn't really like, so that's too bad. He had an excellent main course to make up for it though.
Today we're killing time in Annecy before we head to Chamonix, where we're really in the Alps. I
really wish I could load pictures on here to give visuals to everything I described, because I can't even begin to do it justice, but I can't at
Paris
Looking up the Tower during an hourly light show. the moment. Hopefully once I've moved in to Scotland I'll be able to put up pictures of all these travels. If nothing else though, you can just Google the places I list if you would like a visual 😊
That's all for now, au revoir!
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