Paris & Mont-St.-Michel
D Taylor
Good day,
Please, I would appreciate information and suggestions on transportation
from Paris to Mont-St. Michel, and lodging.
Also, any suggestions for day trips from Paris other than Versailles and
Fontainebleau?
Thank You in advance
Dennis Taylor
Jane Nowlin
One of my most wonderful day trips out of Paris is the home of the great =
French Impressionist painter Oscar Claude Monet. His house is in =
Giverny and there are rail and bus tours available. We had a rental car =
so we drove thru the beautiful French countryside. In late April it was =
heavenly. (for me it would be heaven any time) Jane
Pat Belanger
D Taylor wrote:
>
> Good day,
>
> Please, I would appreciate information and suggestions on transportation
> from Paris to Mont-St. Michel, and lodging.
If you are looking for reasonably priced accommodation in Paris, try the
Hotel Climat de France, Paris XIIe, 9 Rue de Reuilly, 75012 Paris
Phone: (1) 43 70 04 04 or Fax: (1) 43 70 96 53. I just recently
received a brochure from them. The rooms are very modern and functional
(Climat de France is a chain). I read about this hotel in "Travel
Scoops" a Canadian publication (one of the readers had stayed there).
Best of all is the price 420 francs and breakfast is 35 francs - on
December 16, this converted to $109.54 Canadian so it would be even less
in U.S. dollars. The hotel also sent along a map of Paris.
For transportation from Paris to Mont St. Michel, check out the
Travel-Ease site at <http://kajor.com/travel-ease>
This is a site for leisure travellers with over 400 links to travel all
over the world - there is a section on transportation and also a section
on Europe.
Pat
Rosanne Gerry
For day trips, try Chartres...been there twice and it was really nice!
You could also try going to the castles in the Loire valley, but you
should either sign up with a bus tour or rent a car.
For Mont st michel, the nearest train goes to PontorsonThere is one
train per day that takes 4 hours. It costs around 235F plus 36-90F TGV
supplement. You can pay less if you want to buy a carrissimo card for
189F. This card allows 2 people to take a return trip at up to half
price and you'll have to do the math to see if it's worth it.There are
buses that link Pontorson to the Mont...the last bus leaves the Mont at
6:30pm....there are 6 per day, 21F round trip.
Good luck,
Rosanne
Barry Zwick
Hi, Dennis. You can take a one-day bus tour from Paris to Mont-St. Michel,
but it's five hours each way.
No fun, and not enough time at Mont-St. Michel.
I recommend taking the high-speed train to Rennes. It meets the local for
St.-Malo, a charming town on the English Channel. Spend the night, or a
few days, in St.-Malo. From St.-Malo, you can
take a beautiful one-hour bus ride along the coast to Mont-St. Michel and
make a day of it. It's worth that much time and more. When you get there,
just fall in with a tour. The tour guides are wonderful.
A nice and easy place to stay in St.-Malo is the Mercure, part of a
French chain and easy to reserve with an 800 number.
St.-Malo is much cheaper than Paris, by the way. You can get an excellent
hotel room for less than $90.
On Wed, 22 Jan 1997, D Taylor
wrote:
> Good day,
>
> Please, I would appreciate information and suggestions on transportation
> from Paris to Mont-St. Michel, and lodging.
>
> Also, any suggestions for day trips from Paris other than Versailles and
> Fontainebleau?
>
> Thank You in advance
> Dennis Taylor
>
***************************
Barry Zwick
L.A. Times - Makeup Editor
Barry...@latimes.com
***************************
Lollie A Roberts
On Wed, 22 Jan 1997 14:56:37 -0500 D Taylor <dlta...@WORLDNET.ATT.NET>
writes:
>Good day,
>
>Please, I would appreciate information and suggestions on
>transportation
>from Paris to Mont-St. Michel, and lodging.
>
>Also, any suggestions for day trips from Paris other than Versailles
>and
>Fontainebleau?
>
>Thank You in advance
>Dennis Taylor
>
Two years ago I went from Paris to Mont St. Michel (actually from
Frankfurt, via Paris) by train and bus. I don't remember the numbers of
the trains (or even if they had numbers!) but I can tell you the route.
From paris, you take a train to Rennes. In Rennes you switch to another
train to Mont St. Michel. This train stops at a tiny little station a
few kilometers from the Abbey. There is a bus that shuttles back and
forth between the Abbey and the station. To get back to Paris, you just
reverse this route. I did the whole thing in one day, but I wasn't able
to spend more than a few hours at the Abbey and didn't get to see the
tide come in. Also, I did this in late July, when there were a lot of
tourists and the trains and buses were running pretty frequently. There
aren't a lot of accomodations, as I recall, near the Abbey, so I would
book ahead if you plan to stay overnight.
Good luck,
Lollie in Prescott
Lol...@juno.com
Sandra J. Hoffman
Dear Dennis,
How about the following?
Chantilly: 30 miles north of Paris, an easy day excursion from Paris. 40
minutes by train (trains leave hourly from Paris' Gare du Nord station.
Trains leave from the highest-numbered tracks at the far right end of the
station as you face the tracks. Some leave from the main level, but others
leave from the basement "bonlieue" part of the station). Best known for its
elegant chateau, it offers a good art museum, a classic formal French garden,
former royal hunting forest and has a thoroughbred horse race track. Famous
for Chantilly lace.
Malmaison, reached by RER commuter train. Home of Josephine and Napoleon I
Chartres: reached by train from Montparnasse station station or take tour bus
there. Famous for its Cathedrale de Notre-Dame and blue stained glass
windows. Also a charming little city!
Giverny: home of Claude Monet museum. Monet's country home, studio and
famed gardens have been restored.. Take train from Gar Saint-Lazare to
Vernon, then a 3-mile taxi ride to Giverny.
Chateau d'Anet: an hour from Paris on the way to Normandy. Once a royal
residence. Beautiful gardens and the main chateau is filled with Flanders
tapestries an magnificent Renaissance furniture. You can combine this with
Giverny nearby.
If I can help you with any of your travel plans, discount air fares,
discount hotels, etc. please e-mail me at san...@aol.com. And I would be
happy to help further.
Sandy
Searles
Although listers are surely among the most culturally attuned, we must
have committed some faux pas we cringe to remember.
Are there times when we've done something that seemed natural to us, but
was repugnant or culturally unacceptable, or at least elicited a very
unexpected reaction from others? Did we find out about it to our
chagrin? Was there laughter? anger? What happened?
Has this been a recent thread?
Some classic (because frequent?) cultural faux pas might include:
- wearing African waist beads around the neck to a party in, say, Ghana;
- sitting leg over leg and showing someone the sole of your foot in, say,
Egypt (this insult had global repercussions in the '60s when John Foster
Dulles was US Secretary of State and headed a mission to Egypt over the
future of the High Dam project);
- looking the wrong way before crossing the street (not accustomed to the
side on which traffic moves) and getting hit by a motorcycle you really
didn't see;
- taking a walk in the fields at dusk when people are using them for
personal business;
- soaping up in the oriental baths.
In response to Ray's question about how people perceive adventure
travellers:
In villages and rural areas off the tourist track in Egypt, Peru and
elsewhere in those neighborhoods, I've always found people eager to talk,
open, friendly. They sometimes think it's exceeding strange that we're
even there--and sometimes take it in stride. They don't have the odd
mixture of contempt and dependence masked by slick
presentation/exploitation that you'd find, say, in camel drivers at the
pyramids.
In Pucallpa, Peru, we stayed in what had advertised itself to be the
largest thatched structure in South America, or maybe the world--a lodge
in the Amazon. We were treating ourselves and wanting a home base to
explore some villages and collect some Shipibo pottery. The sound of our
"peque-peque" (motorized boat) would go before us and let villagers know
we were coming. These folks lived under thatched canopies, open on the
sides, and whenever we set foot in a village we saw that we were making
them go through changes. They would get up from the hammock, or cover
their bodies, or do some other self-conscious act, but then studiously
ignore us--literally pretend we weren't there--probably to protect their
privacy.
We thought this was odd after all the curiousity we'd been showered with
elsewhere. Then one hot, dripping evening we were in our hammocks
drinking beer and reading in our underwear and . . . who should arrive
walking through what we'd thought was our private living area than a
group of upper class Peruvian tourists out from Lima to see "the largest
thatched structure in South America (the world?)."
When we realized they were really coming right through our veranda, it
was too late to run for cover. We both demurely lifted a leg and
studiously ignored them, went on weating and reading in our underwear,
pretending they weren't there, while their guide gestured to points of
interest and they took pictures. When the last scrape of high-heeled
footstep had faded away, I realized I'd been holding my breath the whole
time. For that brief moment, we'd been the "natives" and they'd been the
tourists. It was awful!
This experience aside, curiousity has been the most frequent response to
our presence, I guess--a kind of interest in our physical differences. .
. .(Language usually prevents our getting very deeply into our
philosophical or other differences.) They don't think of what we're
doing as "adventure travel" because . . . well . . . they live there and
. . . . what's so adventuresome about home?
Generally, when I try (haltingly) to get cerebral, the local person shows
me how something is done and we perform an action together and we learn
and laugh. I'm reminded of a favorite quote:
"I taught a peasant how to write the word "plough", he taught me how to
drive it." Augusto Boal, "Theatre of the Oppressed"
Elizabeth
Sea...@internetni.com
"Sell it all and travel 'til you drop!"
Sonnie Willis
On Sun, 26 Jan 1997, Sandra J. Hoffman wrote:
> Dear Dennis,
> How about the following?
I highly recommend a day trip to St-Germain-en-Laye. Take the RER train
round trip. The train station exits near the Musee Antiquites Nationales.
Closed on Tues. I thought the collection was one of the most stunning
that I have ever visited. The chateau was occupied by Henri II, his wife,
Catherine de' Medici and his mistress, Diane de Poitiers. There is a
charming town to walk, and the forest covers 8000 acres.
|Sonnie Willis , ,
|son...@sonic.net ("\''/").___..--''"`-._
| " `9_ 9 ) `-. ( ).`-.__.`)
| (_Y_.)' ._ ) `._ `. ``-..-'
| _..`--'_..-_/ /--'_.' .'
| (il).-'' ((i).' ((!.-'
|__________________________________________________________________________