Once again, I've been terrible about updating, but we recently (does two weeks ago qualify as recently?) returned from a great 2 week trip, including Northwest France, London, Paris and Boston. It was really fun and an absolute whirlwind of food, drink, friends and, for Chris, job hunting, but I'll get to that part later. Our trip began in a most non-Bulgarian way. Our flight actually DEPARTED EARLY from Istanbul! I really couldn't believe it. I think our bags were the 3rd or 4th on the conveyor belt once we landed in France, and we picked up the rental car and got out of the city with only one wrong turn! No multi-hour waiting and doing nothing, no people trying to smuggle cigarettes into France. It almost felt wrong. But in a really good way. We stayed in a standard roadside hotel the first night and then left that morning for our first destination - Normandy and the DDay Beaches. Going to these sites was something Chris was really interested in, and I just kind of went along for the ride. But I ended up being surprised about how powerful and moving it really was to see where these battles took place (we went to Omaha beach) and the accompanying cemetery.
After we did our historical siteseeing, we stayed for our first of several nights in fabulous B&B's. (note: We stayed at a bunch of great places and a couple of mediocre places. I had wanted to give all of the information about them but, sadly, a few days after we returned, my entire Yahoo Mail account was somehow emptied of all it's information. No more email addresses, contact information or emails. They have all been deleted. Of course Yahoo said there was nothing they can do. So there you have it. All of my reservation information is gone. I've been trying to retrace my steps as far as where I found these places online, but to no avail. If I find information on the places that aren't at the top of my head, I'll post them later. In the meantime, I hate Yahoo.)
Anyway, we stayed at this great B&B the first night. Part of the house dated from the 1700's and the hosts were a lovely husband and wife. The husband didn't speak much English, but managed to point us in the direction of (and make reservations for) a fabulous small restaurant called Chez Francois. It was tiny, with a big fireplace where they cooked all of their meat, and as we would come to expect, had a great wine list, all for about under 20 euros and fabulous!
New update: France Photos are now HERE...
On our second day, we went to Mont St. Michel which is one of the neatest things I've ever seen. It's this huge abbey/island that you can see from really far away and from the parking lot.
The best thing about our trip was that, while it was pretty cold, visiting France in January, we were nearly the ONLY tourists around! Literally, at Mont St. Michel, which is one of the biggest tourist attractions in France and is apparently mobbed with tour buses for most of the year, there was one other couple who happened to be in the same area of the Abbey with us through most of our visit. Right as we were leaving, we saw a tour group come in, but luckily we were on our way out.
Mont St. Michel sits at the corner of Normandy and Brittany, so we headed into Brittany after we left the island. Our first stop was Cancale, which is known for it's oysters, where we stayed in another great B&B.
This is my first installment of the trip, and I'll update more, and hopefully make our photo album really fancy, later...
