Mon voyage vers la belle France: My Family in France Part 2

Salut et Bon Weekend,
The family is now back in New Hampshire safe and sound and so it is definitely time for me to catch up on the second part of our big weekend here. So early Saturday morning we headed out to the market in Rennes to get some provisions and see a very traditional french market. We had galette saucisse, which is totally breakfast but the french refuse to admit it. Basically sausage and cheese wrapped in a salty crepe, ketchup can be added. How much more breakfasty can you get? Mom and I split a galette complet which is egg cheese and ham folded into a salty crepe. Also very good (and breakfasty). After picking up lots and lots of cheese from my cheese guy, some jam, bread, olives and ham we decided to head out to Mont St. Michel. It was a significantly shorter drive than Normandy and before we knew it we were on the causeway to the island. As an interesting side note the legend says that the Abbey was built on command by the Archangel Michel who commanded it to be built by the Bishop of Avranches but he refused until Michel burned a hole in his skull with his finger. Moral of that story, don't mess with St. Michel. The dedication and renaming of the Islet was in 708. It really is an incredible sight driving up and it seems to be from another time entirely. Once we found out it was safe to park in the parking lots (meaning that the tide was not going to come in enough to cover our car) we had our food and waited for it to stop raining some. We then entered and had to battle our way up one of the tiniest streets (not really a street no car could fit) and through what Dad called "the disneyland section" before we got up the 300 steps to the Abbey itself. Once inside the abbey it is very quiet and sort of barren. We met up with our tour guide who was a really nice french man who had spent much of his life living in England so gave the english tours. He spent a lot of time telling fun little stories and providing context to the huge empty rooms and the some of the architecture. All in all a great tour. My favorite part was that he referred to any of the large groups of people not on a tour as barbarians and insisted we wait for them to leave whatever room we were in before he would continue his talk as they were loud and distracting. It was quite funny. After the tour we went back through the abbey again to take in the information we had heard from our tourguide. It was chilly but very beautiful and amazing to think that parts of it were built in the 13th century. Much of it now was updated and restored in the 19th century but it still all looks very authentic. We then took a long walk down the windy side of the stairs to avoid the crowds and stopped in for some crepes before going to mass in the small chapel on the side of the mont. Mass was nice and there was lots of singing, I was quite surprised that for such a small church they had such a large band. Once we got back from the mont we went our for mussels and had a mellow evening in Rennes. Sunday was a quiet day, we walked around, went to the park and went out for another big meal at another seafood restaurant. We wanted to make sure we really got Dad all the oysters he could eat. Enjoy the week!