Mount St Michel

Lots to report on today but I will start with the trip to Mt St Michel. Actually since it is Mt St Michel, I could just dispense with the words and just post pictures - Yes it is that cool. We left the hotel at 8:30 and our driver asked if we wanted to take the scenic route before we got on the highway. That scenic route took us through the towns of Tilly and Bocage which were totally destroyed in the war. Tilly was liberated 23 times in two months as the front lines went back and forth over the town borders. The architecture is different and it makes you even more grateful that Bayeux survived unscathed. Also most of the country drive was through streets lined with hedgerows. This fact will be important in my next posting.
We did get on the highway and about 90 minutes later exited at the far western corner of Normandy as Mt St Michel is on the border with Brittany.
We stopped at a turnoff to get a distant view of the island where the light so prevalent in the impressionist paintings of the Church really showed.
Actually MSM is not really an island anymore, although it will be again in the future. A causeway built to allow access about a century ago has accumulated so much sand around it that the island is now connected to the mainland. The French are building a bridge to replace the causeway and next year will destroy the causeway and hope that eventually the sand will drift back to the ocean.
The driver stopped about a 30 minute walk from the island but we hopped a shuttle bus that took us within a five minute walk.

Once you reach the old town, you start climbing, and climbing. The bottom of MSM is at own with shops, restaurants and hotels all built in the medieval buildings. You keep climbing in a hike that is not for the faint of heart to reach the abbey. The abbey itself is relatively plain now, you walk through big and small chapels. The knights hall is neat for the huge fireplaces that 12 men could stand in. The real treat though is the view. As you walk through the abbey you face different parts of the estuary and you can see you to the channel. We did walked all around the island and down to the water so that we could drip out feet in. C'est froid.

As we left the island, our driver stopped to help a German woman navigate the security gate to get to the parking. While she spoke to him in a mixture of French and English as we drove away he commented that she was German and he still is taken aback when he sees German tourists. They have been coming here for about 20 years now and he told us that his mother was briefly taken prisoner by the Nazis as they were rounding up family members of Resistance fighters. Her life was saved by a German officer who told his soldiers he would not execute a teenage girl. However, other family members were not so fortunate and he was raised learning a number of bad words for Germans.

The whole tour only took about three hours leaving plenty of time for any afternoon of fun.