Rennes, Pontorson, Avranche

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Saturday, September 13, 2008

All 6 of us woke up and got ourselves together to be at the train station around 10. We finally figured out which train tickets to get in order to get to Rennes, a city a few hours from Mont Saint Michel. We tell the man we want to pay separately and begin to do so. He charges 3 peoples cards when he realizes that a maximum of 3 people can pay. Why? I have no idea. So he supposedly annulled the three charges and then charged 3 other people twice the amount. So 3 of us had to pay the other 3 82.10 cash euros. We waited an hour, boarded our train and sat down. French people, who don’t speak English, came up and told us to move because we were in their spots. So we move, trying to figure out where we are supposed to sit. We sit again only to be moved again. We de-boarded the train to ask a worker if we were on the right train. The man tells us that it the correct train but that we don’t have seats. For some reason we were not given a spot to sit on our train ticket so we had to stand/sit in the boarding compartment until other people de-boarded at the next stop. Six people with gigantic hiking bags take up a lot of room. Everyone finally got seats about a half hour into the ride.

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We get to the train station in Rennes around 2 and ask for information on busses to get to Pontorson. Nobody speaks English but they point us to the bus station where no one speaks English either. We discover there are very limited busses to Pontorson…aka…two…one at 5pm and the other at 8pm. We wandered around Rennes and tried to get lunch (around 4) but everything is closed until 7 because they weren’t serving lunch or dinner at that time. We boarded the bus at 5 and got to Pontorson around 7. It was a very charming small town. We decided we would find a spot to stay and go out for a drink at a pub and eat dinner. We walk around trying to find the best deal on where to stay. After walking all the way to the other side of town, we start asking hotels for rooms and they say “C’est complete.” They were full…all of them…every single hotel in Pontorson. We checked between 9-12 hotels and every single one of them was booked. Around 9:30pm we finally went into another hotel that was booked but they were willing to help us. She called a neighboring town to see if they had a vacancy and they did. She also called a cab for us because we don’t know how to speak French. While we are waiting for the cab, she tells us she has a big garden courtyard in this hotel. We decided to ask her if we could pay her to sleep in her garden…she looked at us like we were crazy.  Then she said no because we didn’t have a tent.  We tried to pay her for her help but she would not accept it. They were very nice.

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The gigantic bus of a taxi finally came and took us to Avranche. It cost us 50 euro to get there. The man at the hotel knew exactly who we were when we said the name was under Alex. He laughed at us. The hotel rooms were nice…they ended up costing 150 euros for all of us (in 2 rooms). We were starving so we went out to walk around in the dead town and stumbled upon a pizza place (the only place open) and shared pizza. We passed a bus stop and discovered that no busses run on Sunday….we were going to have to take another taxi to Mont Saint Michel. To get back in to the hotel we had a code to use that opened a garage door and we went in through the back…it was tacky. On all the tables were bowls of candy…or so we thought…so we all took some…it turned out to be sugar cubes. We also stole all the candy they had at the front desk. The only downside was that our toilet didn’t flush…but we were able to use the boys.

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Sunday, September 14, 2008

We realized late last night that we didn’t know what time check out was and we didn’t want to be fined for 2 nights, so Beth and I woke up at 7:15 am to go downstairs and ask (the desk was supposed to open at 7) but no one was there. We stole more candy and went upstairs back to bed. We finally came downstairs around 9:30am. We had the hotel worker call a cab again for us to get to Mont Saint Michel…he was nice enough to do it. He also gave us each a croissant for 1 euro and free orange juice. That meal was supposed to cost 7.50 euros. He was very nice and helpful. We take another gigantic van taxi to Mont Saint Michel that cost another 50 euro.

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Mont Saint Michel was gorgeous. We went to the 11:30am mass there…hard to understand but worth it. We also wanted to go so we could get in free to the rest of the castle. We walked around the whole day taking pictures…finally ate at a mediocre restaurant for 15 euros (salad, pâté, roast, crème Brule). We walked around a little more and sketched some. Finally, we got on the bus to go back to Rennes around 5:15. Got to Rennes around 6:30…waited in the train station until 8:05 for our train and went home. After the train ride back to Paris, we had to take another train ride back to Versailles. We finally got home around midnight. Even with all the issues we had, it was an amazing trip. I had so much fun. Mont Saint Michel was definitely worth the hassle.