Mont St. Michel

I was very excited to finally see Mont St. Michel, a place that had captured my imagination through photos and images for decades now.  And I was even more excited when I saw this (apparently official) road sign along the causeway out to the abbey and spent much of the day wondering bemusedly, with much laughter, what it actually meant.  "Hand-holding not allowed?"  "No families on the causeway?"  "Small girls are banned from this sidewalk?"  We still don't know.  So much for the international language of graphics. 

Here it is.  Looks just like it does in all the photos.  (Wait... this is a photo!)

It was low tide when we were there, so the tidal sand flats were plainly visible.  In fact, we saw some actual pilgrims--or maybe they were just tourists but they were far enough away that we could convince ourselves they were pilgrims--walking across the flats from another "island" over the abbey.  Again with the big tides... when it comes in, these flats get covered with water pretty quickly.  So fast you can't outrun it.  They post the high-tide time at the entrance to the abbey, just so you know.

E and I admire the view from the top of the abbey.  Actually we're not admiring the view at all here.  We're looking at the camera (which wasn't such a bad view either because it was being held by the beautiful H, whose hair was looking very wavy and seductively windswept on this particular day at the abbey).  But immediately before and after this shot we were admiring the view

Now I wasn't sure what to expect when we got inside the abbey itself.  But I certainly wasn't expecting to see a creepy and unusually large replica of the Black Pearl (from Pirates of the Carribean) hanging from the ceiling in one of the side chapels, bestrewn with centuries of cobwebs and dust just to make it all the more macabre.  No one has yet been able to provide a compelling explanation for the ghost ship in the chapel.  Along with the "Please Don't Offer Assistance to Small Children" sign along the causeway road, it was one of the two mysteres du jour (i.e., "Mysteries of the Day") at Mont St. Michel

Yep.  That's one mighty big fireplace.  Think of the size of the marshmallows you could roast there!

As I said, I didn't know what to expect from the abbey itself.  And I was quite surprised to learn that it's a seemingly never-ending series of rooms and chapels that spirals down the side of the mountain, like a giant conch shell where you move from chamber to chamber, lower and lower, until it spits you out at the bottom where you're surrounded by a barrage of tacky souvenir shops (is that a tautology?) and over-priced food vendors.  Come to think of it, it's not that dissimilar to the Guggenheim Museum in New York.  If the Guggenheim was turned upside down, and rose up magically out of the East River every day, it would be a remarkable 20th-century reincarnation of Mont St. Michel.

A nice old stairway on Mont St. Michel, made even nicer by an abundance of natural sunlight.  We're a bit tired of gothic church gloom by now.

Only the abundance of windows kept this room from contributing further to France's surfeit of dark gothic stone vaulting.

This is what I'm talking about with the souvenir shops and food vendors.  That's me on the left, using E's stroller as a battering ram to get through the tourists and out into fresh air.  Somehow the quaintness of narrow medieval streets dissipates when you're stuck behind a battalion of dawdlers who think a Mont St. Michel paperweight or "Abbey Waffles (with Nutella)" is just the thing they need at that very moment.  C is following me, taking advantage of the wake I'm creating.

I realize this is almost identical to the first picture on this post, but I like it anyway.

Are these not the most adorable shopping carts in the history of all mankind?!  I tell you--and it's the truth--skip the abbey (it looks better on the postcards anyway) and hit the SuperMarche at Mont St. Michel and you won't be disappointed. :-)