On American Visitors, Closed Castles, and Snails

The weekend after our visit to Chartres, we hosted our first visitors as a couple in what is going to be a very visitor-filled semester - and we love having visitors, so it's very exciting! These particular visitors were our friends Jimmy and Jenny from North Carolina. They took a multi-week trip through northern France the UK and in the process, visited us and another friend in Durham, England.

After renting a car in Paris, they drove to Rennes on Friday night. After a few hours of talking and catching up, we went to bed. Saturday morning, we took them to our marché in Cesson to buy food for our dinner that evening. (Unlike outdoor markets in the US, here in France, they run year-round, not just in summer.) Two of Jimmy's goals in France were to have a traditional four-course French dinner and to eat escargot. Since he hadn't done either of those yet and since our house was their last stop in France, we did our best to plan a full meal before their arrival so we knew exactly what we needed to get at the market, including several kinds of cheese for a cheese course. Our regular cheese-monger was very helpful in this regard, recommending several different types he thought would be appropriate. We also purchased some snail-like creatures from another merchant (although it's not clear if these were actually snails or just some other kind of shell-creature) and he, too, was very helpful in explaining how to prepare them.

Lisa and Jenny both agreed that this
would be a cool place to get married.
Their husbands both wondered why
they were still thinking about getting
married.

Jimmy, braving the
castle stairs.

Following the shopping trip, we came home, packed a lunch and headed out in the rental car to show Jimmy and Jenny around our area. Fortunately, Jimmy can drive a stick-shift since it's nearly impossible to rent an automatic car in France, making it difficult for Lisa and I to drive anywhere! Our first stop was a ruined castle in Saint-Aubin-du-Cormier (about a 25-minute drive northwest of our town). Lisa had heard about this castle from two American Mormon missionaries she befriended on the bus. (They're very nice and we've even played ping-pong with them at their church, but that's a story for another time.) The castle dates from the 13th century and was meant to guard the border between the two baronies of Fougères and Vitré, although I don't know why it's ruined. Anyway, despite the cold misty rain that was falling, we climbed all over the ruins and explored several underground passageways (they didn't really go anywhere, sadly; no buried treasure here). It was very cool because this is the first ruined castle we've seen in France and the first one where we can literally climb and walk anywhere we want!

Castle ruins at St-Aubin-du-Cormier.

After the castle, we got back in the car and headed to Fougères in order to see a castle that wasn't in ruins. We ate our packed lunches in a municipal parking lot then set out to find the castle. After a couple unsuccessful attempts to figure out where exactly we were, we decided we should stop in the tourism office to get a map. Unfortunately, finding the tourism office also proved difficult until Lisa asked in pharmacy. After waiting in line behind a middle-aged French couple who seemed to be using the sole employee of the tourist office to help them plan a weeks-long trip through Brittany, we finally got our map and some disappointing information: the castle in Fougères is closed in the month of January! (The young Spanish couple behind us were also disappointed to learn this and even more disappointed to learn there was no direct way to get from Fougères to Mont-Saint-Michel. Hopefully they found something else to do.) However, the trip wasn't a total waste because we found another fresh seafood store that seemed to be selling something much closer to snails than what we saw that morning so we got a few of these, too. Jimmy and Jenny were also able to buy some chocolates to take home with them as a gift.

Lisa and I at Vitré.

Still determined to see a non-ruined castle, we drove southeast to Vitré. It was a very cool castle and worth the trip. Inside, there's a small municipal art museum that had some nice 19th-century paintings of Vitré and its area. Lisa obviously described much of the castle in a previous entry, so I won't rehash it here. Instead, I'll just point out that Jimmy set off an alarm while trying to open a door in the castle, but fortunately, there were no armed guards or nasty dogs or anything.

Mmmm butter.

Should we really try these?

We then drove home and Lisa and Jenny prepared the four-course meal (which turned out to be five in the end!), Jenny bravely digging the snails out of their shells (which looked like quite a chore) and Lisa making most of the rest of the meal. The snails were cooked in a butter garlic sauce and we all tried one (except Lisa, of course, being a vegetarian). It was a very similar texture and taste to calamari and pretty good, I thought. We also had two kinds of wine and champagne; bean soup; galettes (Breton buckwheat crepes) with ham, egg, cheese and mustard; salad; a cheese course; and a pear tarte tatin for dessert, along with some chocolates that Lisa and I had purchased at our local bread and pastry shop, unbeknownst to Jimmy and Jenny. One of the chocolates was shaped like a snail-shell and called escargot so we made sure Jimmy got that one! In good French style, the meal and conversation ended up lasting four hours or so and finally we realized it was late and we had to go to bed to prepare for our big day on Sunday.

Jenny, me, Jimmy at Mont-Saint-Michel.

Sunday, we woke early and piled into the rental car to head up to Mont-Saint-Michel. Our goal was to get there around 9:30 when the abbey opened and before all the busloads of tourists arrived. We met the goal pretty well. I won't repeat everything about Mont-Saint-Michel since it was my third trip and Lisa's fourth trip there other than to say that, unlike our last visit, this time we got to walk outside on the seaward side of the abbey to see the fortification walls, which was pretty cool.

The American Cemetery

After Mont-Saint-Michel, we got back in the car, ate our packed lunch on the road, and drove to the Omaha Beach D-Day site, about an hour or so away. Lisa had been there before, but I had not. The military cemetery and museum there are actually on US soil. The French government gave to the US in perpetuity as thanks for helping to liberate them from the Nazis. (Despite this, though, all the employees are French!) The museum was very interesting with lots of information about the

Walking down to Omaha Beach

D-Day planning and execution. Because it was cold and windy, we didn't walk far into the cemetery proper, but it was still an impressive sight to see the neat rows of white crosses in well-manicured grass. We also walked down to the beach itself, although there's not much to see except a beach. The hike back up the hillside was a bit tough and I can't imagine what it would have been like trying to make that climb carrying 70 pounds of gear and being shot at by German soldiers.

The next goal was to get to the city of Caen for Jimmy and Jenny to return the rental car and make their ferry to England. Along the way, we stopped at Arromanches to see what's left of the artificial port built by the Allies (see our previous blog entry on Normandy for this) and we also had quite a time trying to get gas. We made it to Caen shortly before Jimmy and Jenny's bus to the ferry terminal was scheduled to leave, the last one of the night. However, the rental car office was closed (it was a Sunday night) and the sign on the door gave almost no instructions on how to drop off a car after-hours. It just said to talk to someone in the train
station across the street. By the time we did and figured out where to move the car, Jimmy and Jenny's bus

The train from Caen to Rennes is semi-direct. That's an understatement.

had left (although the ferry itself didn't leave for another five hours. Lisa and I were taking the last train to Rennes, but that, too, didn't leave for another hour or so. That meant we all got to spend some time hanging out at the train station (watching, along with everyone else, a couple of teenage boys get thoroughly searched by about eight policemen!) and saying a more leisurely good-bye. Finally, we put Jimmy and Jenny in a taxi to the ferry terminal and Lisa and I got on the train home.

It was a lovely weekend and a lot of fun to be able to show friends around the area where we live. We're looking forward to the many other visitors we have coming in March and April!