Mont-Saint-Michel

We took a day trip to see Mont-Saint-Michel today, stopping at a few towns along the way. Everything we saw today was up: upstairs or uphill. It was a long day: we left our hotel room in Paris at 6:60 am and did not get back until nearly 11 pm.

We started at Saint-Malo, a medieval walled town known for its history of corsairs, French privateers who were sometimes pirates. The town was heavily damaged in WWII and rebuilt from 1948-1960. The tomb of the French writer Chateaubriand is on an island just off shore. We walked the entire wall of the medieval city.

view of the bay/port from the wall

low tide (apologize: my camera focused on the trees)

The Saint-Malo Cathedral was built in the 12th century on the site of a 7th century church. It has a rose window that was made in 1968 to replace one destroyed in 1693.

We walked through the town and I had an amazing pastry.

From there we went to Mont-Saint-Michel. Obviously this is all uphill. This is a rocky island roughly a half mile off the shore of NW France. When the tide goes out you can walk to it, but when the tide comes in it is an island. An abbey is built on top of the island, with the very earliest portions of the abbey begun in 708. In the 10th century the Benedictines settled there and a village grew below the abbey. Over time it developed into a military stronghold that withstood English forces over centuries. During the French revolution the religious institutions dissolved and it was used as a prison. Eventually it was declared a national monument.

Mont-Saint-Michel Abbey

Abbey wooden ceiling

Abbey cloister

Seagull at the top of Mont-Saint-Michel. He was staring everyone down.

Low tide: you can see the water way out in the distance with just small tendrils coming in. If you look closely at the near end you can see footprints of people who had walked through. By the time we left this was all covered with water as the tide was coming back in.