France trip review Day 1--Paris airport to Normandy, Mont St. Michel

After the drama of our flight from JFK-Paris we arrived in Paris-- 6 hours late. We had 4 hours to drive and I had planned on having over 12 hours of sunlight to drive in. Since we landed at 12:30pm local time we got our bags and rented our car. We were famished so we stopped at an "autogrille" which is like a truck stop here in the U.S. These chips caught Chris's eye so he had to get them

From France--Day 1 Normandy

That is "Chicken and Thyme" flavored chips. They turned out to be totally disgusting, as you can imagine potatoes flavored as chicken would be. The auto grille had many interesting flavors but one notable absence that I would take note of after many stops at the autogrille--turkey. I don't think the French eat turkey! I could not find it anywhere. Their pre-made sandwiches at the autogrille were always chicken salad, ham and butter, or chicken and bacon. The autogrilles also have a huge wall dedicated to sweets. They love their sweets in France! Even things that we have in the U.S. come in a sweeter variety in France--Coke is sweeter, as is Red Bull!

After driving for about an hour on the autoroute, I spotted a church on a hill in the distance. France does a great job of telling you about cultural, historical and tourist sites to see off the autoroute. I saw a sign that said the church on the hill was an abbey! We love abbeys, as our two favorite places in Italy were off-the-beaten-path abbeys. We unfortunately did not get a lot of information about this abbey, but it is beautiful!

From France--Day 1 Normandy

From France--Day 1 Normandy

From France--Day 1 Normandy

We got back in our car as it was getting later in the day and we still had a few hours to drive. I really wanted to see Mont St. Michel at sunset and I thought since we arrived so late there was no way we would get there in time--but we did! We started seeing signs for it and suddenly saw it in the distance! We got off the autoroute and it was quite a drive off the main road. The grass on the way out to Mont St Michel was so green and there were cows everywhere! I have never seen the grass so green and the sky so blue.

From France--Day 1 Normandy

Here you can see Mont St. Michel in the distance--nothing around

From France--Day 1 Normandy

Finally, we got up to the island. This picture does not do it justice, but it was beautiful at sunset!

From France--Day 1 Normandy

The grass you see in the picture above is completely covered when the tide comes in. As we were standing there the tide was coming in so fast. We had no idea what a treat we were in for later! The causeway going out to the island is not submerged in the tide but the parking lot is, so it is possible to drive out to it when the tide is in.

Next, we drove to our hotel for the night, the Chateau de Bouceel. When we drove up the driveway I knew I was instantly in love

From France--Day 1 Normandy

This is where we're staying tonight??!!?? All my obsessive researching for great hotels paid off! We were greeted by a hee hawing donkey and Regis, the delightful owner who spoke perfect English. He quickly told us that we were in a for a special treat tonight because this was one of only a few nights a year that the tide was completely in at Mont St. Michel--it would be a true island tonight--and it was happening in 1 hour! We quickly brought our bags in so that we could go back to Mont St. Michel and see what all the fuss was about.

I was stopped dead in my tracks when I saw our room!

From France--Day 1 Normandy

From France--Day 1 Normandy

There was even another smaller room connected with a twin bed

From France--Day 1 Normandy

As Regis was showing us around the room, in comes a wonderful surprise! Titi (pronounced "tee tee")!

From France--Day 1 Normandy

Regis thought nothing of it when I scooped Titi up in my arms and took him over to our bed. It was the first of many encounters with hotel dogs and cats.

Regis made a dinner reservation for us at a restaurant near Mont St. Michel to eat "the best lamb we had ever tasted". Well, I had never had lamb, so I didn't really have anything to compare it to. Regis said that the lamb feeds on the grass once the tide goes out around Mont St. Michel, so the grass is very salty, in turn making the lamb salty.

We drove back to Mont St. Michel and it was beautiful lit up at night! We couldn't get a picture of the tide of course, but it was cool being surrounded by water on this island. We couldn't get great pictures because of the darkness, but here is one

From France--Day 1 Normandy

From there we went to the restaurant to eat the salty lamb. It was good! I was proud of myself for trying something new. We realized that we needed gas before we got back to the hotel so we asked the waiter where the nearest gas station was. He spoke little english so he pointed in a direction, said 7 kilometers, and kept saying "automatique". I took this as being a "pay at the pump" type of thing and I said ok. He kept stressing to us that it was "automatique" and seemed concerned, but I assured him as best I could that we were ok with that.

We drove to the gas station (in the middle of nowhere) and it was pay at the pump, but it wouldn't take our credit card. We tried every card we had, but none of them worked. I thought maybe our bank had turned off our cards because they thought it was odd our cards were being used in France (even though we called to tell them we would be here). The error message was in French, of course, so we couldn't really understand what it was saying, other than error. There was of course no attendant and no one in sight in the tiny town.

We got back in the car and immediately the gas light turned on. I was starting to get nervous. It was raining, cold, and we were in a place we didn't know. Running out of gas is something that runs high on our list of stressors. We drove in nervous silence back to the autoroute (about 9 kilometers) hoping there would be a gas station there. No such luck. There was no one around and nothing open. We drove up one exit and saw a hotel that was open. I got out of the car (since I knew some French) and went in to ask the attendant where the nearest gas station was. The woman didn't speak a lick of English. She apparently couldn't understand my broken French because we weren't really getting anywhere. After a game of charades I finally figured out that there was a gas station 6 kilometers on the autoroute. However, she kept saying "automatique", just like the waiter at the restaurant.

We cautiously drove to the next gas station. When we made it we had the same problem--error. We were beyond frustrated! There was a button to push for help at the gas station, but of course no one answered. I was starting to panic. Chris suggested we drive to a hotel we passed about a kilometer back and BRING someone back with us to show us how to use the machine. Of course, when we got to that hotel, the front door was locked. We felt totally defeated. A man appeared in the lobby and so we signaled for him to come help us. We were so relieved to learn that he spoke English, so we told him our situation. He kept telling us "tomorrow you put gasoline in your car!" After a few times of this and us telling him we already had a hotel room 20 kilometers away, we realized that even though this man pronounced his English almost perfectly, he could not comprehend the language. It was a very odd combination. After a few minutes of back and forth we figured out he was trying to tell us he could not help us because you need a pin for your credit card to use these gas stations. We asked him to come with us and enter his pin, or even use his credit card and we would pay him cash. We finally got it out of him that he was Italian and the pin code is a French thing. I was about to cry. I didn't want to drive back to the hotel because it was about 20 km driving through the country and I didn't think we'd make it. We sat in our car and I started to panic. I was starting to realize that there was a good possibility that we would be spending the night in our tiny little car. I figured Regis would figure out we didn't come home last night and would come looking for us eventually. We were trying to figure out what to do when the Italian man knocked on our window and offered to drive around and find a gas station for us so we wouldn't waste gas doing it ourselves. It did cross my mind that we were getting into a car with a man we didn't know who didn't fully understand us (and we didn't fully understand him either), but we had no choice. Chris and I got into Marco's (finally got his name out of him) tiny car drove back to the gas station and looked at it again and he told he told us that it was for "French only". I started to feel sick, or about to cry. We drove a few km down the autoroute with no luck, then back the other way and finally found one that was attended! He drove us back to his hotel and kept saying "you campaign me". We had no idea what he meant. He told us a story about a time he was going to miss a flight because he ran out of gas and a man offered his "Ford Mustang" to him to drive to the airport. It was a long and drawn out story, but he was trying to tell us "someone did this for me once, so I'm doing it for you, and you must do it for someone else" .
When we got back to our car Chris said “I’ll do the same thing for someone else like the man in the Mustang did for you” but he didn't really understand us. We got in our car and hoped we could make it to the gas station. We noticed that Marco wasn't going back in the hotel, but he was signaling for us to follow him back to the gas station! How nice! We followed him and he got gas also, but I noticed that he had half a tank, so I think he was just being nice making sure we could make it there. Chris told him he wanted to pay for his gas but he would not let us. When they went in to pay Chris said Marco even tried to buy Chris a cup of coffee! We safely drove back to our hotel and went to bed!

To see all of our pictures from Day 1 click here