I am bemused each time I read an article exclaiming that Mont St Michel is a short day trip away from Paris, and this includes Rick Steves’ claim of it being an easy day trip. Maybe, if you are a staunch believer of around-every-country-in-Europe-in-30-days kind of tourism…?

Let’s established a couple of basic things here. Given 24 hours in a day, and assuming one gets a good 8-hours sleep, we’re left with 16 hours for all activities in a day. If you need an hour or so to get ready in the morning – shower, personal grooming, breakfast (and coffee!) – now we’re down to 15 hours available for the day to play tourist etc.

The Mont St Michel is a beautiful site and I highly recommend it to anyone who’s pondering whether to go or not. Situated at the boundary between Normandy and Brittany, it was assigned Unesco World Heritage Site all the way back in 1979 (before I was even born!) and attracts reasonable number of visitors each year. It is also, however, some 360km away from Paris. Not exactly the next town over.

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On the eve before our departure for Reykjavík, I had the good fortune to across an article that talked about the emergence of Nordic cuisine, led by René Redzepi of Noma in Copenhagen. As I read through the article, my attention was steered immediately to the mention of DILL Restaurant, conveniently located in the city where I’d be visiting right the next day. I immediately sent an email to them, hoping to snare a table for LT and me with such short notice. We struck gold – they booked us in for Saturday night, hurrah!

Arriving back from the Golden Circle Tour, we hastily made ourselves presentable and requested the front desk for a taxi to drive us over. We were not far from the restaurant, but after the wet and windy day, we needed more comfort than ever. At least the rain seemed to have abated. I wasn’t sure my coat would be happy to get another dose of soaking!

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