The whole reason for visiting Caen was to stay in a small French town close enough for a day trip to both Mont St Michel and the D-Day beaches. We took the train from Paris to Caen which took just over 2 hours. We managed to find a really good deal at the Hotel Ibis so this stay was going to be a bit of an upgrade from the hostels we were use to. Just walking into town, we both new this was not a normal tourist stop. Not many people got off the train, we couldn't see any other tourists and the town didn't make it into any of our guide books. But we couldn't understand why. The winding streets were coblestoned and looked amazing. There were pedestrian only streets which made for sight seeing and the town was home to some really nice churches and a castle. It even had a marina which was a surprise as the coast was quite a distance from town.
The next day we did our number day trip. Mont St Michel. Mont St Michel is a 1000 year old castle/church/prison sitting on a small island about 100 metres off the coast. We got up at 6.00am and caught the early morning train. Mont St Michel get's about 3000 visitors a day but for some reason this is the only train departure. Access to the Mont is by the small town of Pontorson where we planned to walk around for a bit, but upon arrival we found out that there is only one main street and nothing else to see. Better yet the only train back to Caen didn't leave until 5.50pm so we had 9 hours to explore the Mont. The shops around the base of the island use to be a small medina in medival times, but they're now home to tacky tourist shops where you can by everything from a $7 Mont St Michel pencil right up to a full dinnner set complete with Mont St Michel place mats.
The next day we were planning to go out to the D-Day beaches but after doing some research and finding out that the beaches are really only used today by locals to swim we decided not to go. I guess I had visions of memorials, guard towers, barraks and other things along the beach which would make an interesting visit. The only thing we found out was that there was one memorial but it cost 18 euros to get in, then just told a bit of the history. But we had already read all the history, watched the movies and looked at the pictures on our visit to the Hotel Invalides a few days earlier in Paris. Instead we took this day to just look around the town of Caen. After checking out a few of the churches and the marina we sat in a park where I tried to sketch the hardest church in Caen. Lucky for me it started to rain and I could get out of that one.
The next day we left Caen at 7.53am and headed for Cologne Germany.