Mont St. Michel

Europe » France » Brittany
September 8th 2014

Published: November 10th 2017

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Mont St. Michel from the parking lot.

We walked about 200 yards to catch a bus that took us within 1200 feet of the entrance to the village. Up to last year you had to walk all of the way.

Geo: 48.65, -2.01667

We left our hotel and drove to Mont St. Michel. Its an island, that has a small village with an Abbey on the top, inhabited by monks. They have been there since 873 AD. The place is really cool. The village was packed with tourists and souvenir shops. We opted for a 4 ticket package to 4 sites on the island. Luckily not many people were doing this and we didn't have a lot of people around. We worked our way to the top of the island, where the church and abbey were. Great views from there. The tide here is tremendous. It rises and falls 50 feet. We got there at low tide and couldn't see the ocean. When the tide is up, the water slaps against the walls around the village.
We left Mont St. Michel and headed for our next stop for the night in St. Malo. This is also on the coast, but the hotel we chose was a mile out of town because all of the hotels were in the old part of town with narrow, cobblestone streets and lots of foot traffic. After checking in, we headed over to St Malo

In the church

for some looking around and dinner. The town is on an island with one land road to it and a fortified wall all around it. We walked around for a while and found a place for dinner.
The next morning, we drove over to an area on the coast that has great scenery. We stopped at an old lighthouse and then an old castle. The castle was started in 937 AD. It went through some changes, fire, war. The castle we were looking at was finished in 1793. By then, it was called Fort LA Latte.
We then decided that we needed some lunch. Most places in the little villages close at 2:00PM and don't open until dinner time. Wouldn't you know it, but it was just after 2:00PM. We drove to several places and all they were serving was drinks. One place felt sorry for us and she made us some ham and cheese sandwiches, and we had a beer. She got a nice tip.
After that we headed home for a short nap and then back to St. Malo for some sightseeing and some dinner and wine. All in all a very nice day.
The weather has been

looking out over the village

pretty good so far. We had been watching the Paris weather in the paper and it was raining almost every day for weeks. It has been mostly sunny and in the low to mid 70's so far. Knock on wood. Tomorrow, we head inland into the Loire valley for 2 nights. There are hundreds of Chateaus from the 16th to 18th century in that area. We are going to try to hit a half dozen or so.

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