No M.T.S.T. Mitchell for us! and uh oh, we're getting fancy again

We drove away from Rouen mid-morning after meeting our hosts at the Airbnb. They have renovated 6 of 9 apartments in the old 17th century mansion where we were staying and they shared a bit of history with us. We loved staying in that historical monument of a house. I'll miss that place and Rouen itself. I could live here (well, maybe I'd need to learn how to pronounce it properly). What a beauty.

Our destination was Mont St. Michel (which Google kept pronouncing as M.T.S.T. Mitchell, much to our amusement). Oh - also from Google - yesterday I was heading to see the famous town clock in Rouen, which is called Gros Horloge, and Google kept saying "gross whore". Jeez Google.  Anyway, when approaching M.T.S.T., it was clear we'd made a big mistake. I'd visited back in 2017 and had an unbelievable time, so much so that I wanted Mom to see it. Here's the blog entry from that trip. This experience was completely the opposite. What a mess. The place is now overrun with tourists (which, admittedly, we totally are) and arriving around the lunch hour should have been thought out better. We wound up in an intractable traffic jam and decided to flee. It took 20 minutes to do so because of the snarl. And while waiting for the great untangling, Mom took a few photos - a couple of the Mont in the distance, some of the crowd and one of me, so happy to be at the wheel. As we drove away, we had to maneuver through terrible, tiny roads with fast-driving French folks taking up more lane than an American can handle. Very stressful.

So imagine our relief when we arrived at tonight's destination, the Grand Thermous Hotel (that's not exactly it, but it's close enough and I prefer it). It's a spa/resort kind of thing and it is also the only room we could find in the town of St. Malo on a Friday evening. Oooh la la! We had our car whisked away by the valet, our bags carried to our room, and dinner rolled in on a table (but weirdly there's a step up in our room, so I had to help the guy maneuver the table up into the room and later back out again. I didn't get a tip). We watched some French TV for a while. The top story on the news was the shooting in Texas. They had several segments on it before moving on to Ukraine. Then there was this show that resembled America’s Funniest Home Videos, only it was the French version. Mimes accidentally talking. Berets falling off the heads of artists. 

Now we are watching, much more sensibly, Poirot, on my laptop and enjoying a curious seagull (I think? Jen - see photo), who landed right at our open window up here on the 4th floor. Tomorrow? We are on a ferry, headed back to the UK. Au revoir, France, it’s been molto bene! (I know, wrong language, but I don’t French well. 😉)