Mont St Michel

We had a great day today; we woke up early in morning and drove to Mont St Michel. An abbey situated on an island in the Baie de Mont Saint Michel. The Baie is famous for its very odd tidal patterns on certain days of the year the water will sweep away any cars parked along the road to the Mont.

 When we drove up, the Mont was very beautiful in the morning sun with only a handful of hardy souls there in the biting morning cold. On the walk up the hill to the old abbey there is shop-lined road originally built for the thousands of pilgrims who come there. It is amazing how they manage to fit so many things on such a tiny island, every inch of land was being used for something. Most of the space was taken up by the enormous abbey but at the base of the island there were bits of building sticking out everywhere in a tiny maze of alleys running out from the one road. When we walked into the walled “town” we had the place to ourselves, none of the shops were open so we walked along the ramparts a bit before going to the abbey.

At the abbey, we had arrived too early to take a guided tour, which we had heard was worth it, so we walked around a bit on our own and tried to get back to the start to take a tour. Unfortunately, we went down the wrong staircase and when we tried to get back up, we were pushed back down by a bossy tour guide. In the end I had to talk with the lady at the desk and act cute so that she would let us back in. The tour was great; the lady told us all sorts of interesting things about the architecture and the history.  One of the most interesting things she told us was that they used to bring up supplies in a basket on a rope and the giant wheel they used to pull up the heavy bricks and food was turned by prisoners of the French revolution, like ran in the wheel like hamsters. On our way out we bought two boxes of the famous Mère Poulards Cookies, they are delicious.

On our drive home, we stopped and climbed Mont Dol.   It was not a long walk but there was a tower up top that you could climb to get great views, there was also a windmill and a café.