My Most Excellent European Adventure, Day 3: Here in the slums of St. Michel

Saturday, April 9
Mt. Saint Michel, Giverny, Paris

Another road warrior day! We went ot Mt. St. Michel this morning. LOTS of stairs, HUGE abbey, beautiful view of the causeway (mostly quicksand!). Perfect weather today. Again. I have been here before in high school, but I definitely appreciated it more as a more mature adult... There truly is no place like it in the world. When you first get there, you walk up these narrow streets with LOTS of stairs and LOTS of shops to get 200 feet up to the abbey.

View from the top!

Once at the abbey, you can buy a ticket to tour inside. It was incredible!

Getting down was a bit tricky...

Thanks to this scaffolding we had to risk death to navigate...

After that we drove to a different military cemetary since we didn't make it to the one yesterday at Omaha Beach. It turned out to be amazing! We were the only ones there and it was so quiet and peaceful. A nice change after a busy morning.

There was a small chapel at the cemetary

One of my favorite things at this cemetary was the interior of the chapel. It amazed me how much honor and tribute France feels toward the American soldiers in WWII. I had no idea that there were so many American military cemetaries in Northern France.

This is a map inside the chapel showing the breach from Normandy across France

After paying our respects and feeling patriotic, we set off again to drive to Giverny (about a 2 hour drive). This is where Monet lived and painted Waterlilies. Beautiful gardens, ponds, and flowers. It was packed - we had to wait 45 minutes to get in- but I think it was worth it.

This was Monet's house

Look like a familiar
painting???

After Giverny, we drove another 2 hours to Paris. Crazy driving! Poor Betsy drew the short stick and drove us in to the city (really we made her) and we spent an hour just trying to find the hotel. Our original plan was to park outside of the city and take the metro to the hotel, but after our first parking attempt, we walked for a block and thought we could try driving in. Besty said she wasn't afraid. I would have been... But over an hour later, 2 unsuccessful phone calls to the hotel and no close parking to be found, we couldn't find the hotel or parking anywhere. We finally parked out of the city and took a taxi in. Relief. We were grateful to get there. It was a little stressful, but a fun day. When we got to the hotel we went to get dinner and came back to the room for bed. It is now about midnight. Got to get ready for another busy day tomorrow.