Mont St-Michel

Tuesday, May 7, 2013; Mont St-Michel

This is an astonishing place to visit; the third most visited place in France (after the Eiffel Tower and the Louvre).  It is both a religious building and a fort, built over a span of 500 years, starting in 1017 and ending in 1521.  It was “a political football” in the words of Fodor’s, and to understand it you need to understand the history of England, Normandy, Brittany, and the Franks.  Suffice it to say, it is a most impressive structure.

The countryside here is flat as a pancake, so that as you approach the Mont it rises out of the distance above the farmland:

 

 

 

Currently it is surrounded completely by water only twice a month when the tides are the highest, but the sand of the flats surrounding the mountain are treacherous and, supposedly, tourists have died in quicksand and because of the inrushing tidal bore which is among the highest in the world.  Currently you park in a vast sea of parking on the mainland and take a shuttle over a causeway to the base of the mountain.  There is a small village at the base of the mountain which contains tourist shops, restaurants and a couple of hotels.

 

You then begin to climb and climb and climb.  And climb.  At the top, as you look out, it is easy to see why it was impossible to attack this place.  It was never done successfully.  We were there at low tide, and In the photo below there is a group of tourists on the sand being led on a sand tour (which we did not take).

 

The rooms are amazing.  All of the stone for the construction was brought to the site from a quarry miles away, by boat.  There is a beautiful church, and the bell in the tower is rung by hand using the rope you can see hanging down:

 

While we were there they tolled noon, and went on tolling for about ten minutes.  There has been a Dominican monastery here for almost 1000 years, and the history is fascinating.  They are a contemplative order, and the story of their self-sacrifice and piety is not understandable to me.  Here are the monks and nuns at Mass:

 

The Mont has a wonderful audio guide which we took, and it was about 2 ½ hours to go through the whole thing.  Here’s the cloister:

 

We then had a late lunch and shopped some at the tourist stores on the way down.  Tomorrow on to the Brittany coast.