Saint Malo and Mont Saint-Michel

January 22, 2018

by apaparis

This weekend we went on our first APA weekend trip and visited the walled city of Saint Malo and the old abbey of Mont Saint-Michel. It was rainy and gray for most of the trip, but that didn’t stop us from having a blast! (A blast of wind, get it?)

Students accidentally reenacting a scene from Titanic.

A few years ago, I read a book called All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr. The story is set during World War II, and follows the life of a blind girl called Marie-Laure who moves from Paris to Saint Malo to stay safe during the war. Ever since, the city has held a strange allure to me. In elementary school, I read Cornelia and the Audacious Escapades of the Somerset Sisters, a book about a girl who lived in Morocco and desperately wanted to travel there to drink mint tea. A few years later, I read The Thief Lord, and felt that I desperately needed to visit the canals of Venice and feed the pigeons in Saint Mark’s plaza.  I had the same feeling about walking along the ramparts of Saint Malo and looking out at the sea. We explored the city on foot and went to a crèperie for dinner. I ate a delicious beignet filled with Nutella and on our walk back home, got splashed by the ocean, which can rise over 13 meters at high tide.

The next morning, we set off for Mont Saint-Michel, an old stone abbey on the top of a mountain in the sea. We were lucky to visit on a Sunday because we caught a bit of a mass being conducted in the church there. We rented audioguides and got to explore the entire island at our own pace, before meeting up at the bottom of the path for a delicious lunch. Even though we visited on a very gray day, I think the mist just made it more mysterious and otherworldly (mist-erious, I’m full of hilarious jokes today). I would love to be a monk here and sing Gregorian chants from my garden overlooking the water.

Mont Saint-Michel looming in the distance.

Stalling inside to avoid the rain a little longer,

Clara