Mont St.-Michel, Revisited

Well, I'm chock-full of blogworthy photos and experiences to keep me going for a couple weeks. Nir "Nirycakes" Modiano is currently on his merry way back to the San Francisco Bay Area and we had a great time together. Boy voyage, Nir!


Friday morning we rented a car (travel recommendation: if you rent through Alamo, you can get kilometrage illimité, which is hard to find) and drove to Mont St. Michel, the monastery/village in Normandy which is a self-contained island when the tide is up but is surrounded by miles of mud and quicksand when the tide is down. It was my second time visiting the city, which began as a settlement as early as the 10th century.

Two photos of note: the first is a statue of the archangel St. Michel, brandishing his sword as he prepares to face a dragon. I like the photo because it looks like St. Michel is going to smite the guy working beneath him, who was in the process of assembling an art exhibit. The second (right) is Claire gazing up at the castle walls from the mudflats below. I like this one because it's enigmatic: what is a pregnant woman doing in this vast expanse of muddy emptiness and what is she looking at?

French Word for the Day: the word for "quicksand" is "sable mouvant", translated literally as "moving sand".

In news which couldn't possibly be any less related, I've recently been thinking about the most important dilemma I will face when I move to Boston: namely, what to do about rooting for the Boston-area sports teams. I've spent a good deal of energy the past few years actively despising the Boston Red Sox (fans too self-important) and New England Patriots (too much success, plus they beat the Eagles in the Super Bowl), and I'm not sure if I should flip-flop my allegiances just to fit in with the rest of Beantown. The Boston Celtics aren't a problem--I've always liked them, ever since fellow northern Minnesotan Kevin McHale clotheslined L.A.'s Kurt Rambis--so I will likely follow them more closely. Suggestions?