Mont St Michel

---

We had a early start walking to the Cityrama depot for our Mont St Michel Tour (0715 depart). As the last few were finding seats, we had an American couple sit behind us, with the woman stating “this is a joke”, obviously referring to the fact that she had a window with a pillar in the way. Had to bite tongue, mind you, for the whole trip!! She whined about the brunch we had, up until the walk up the hill when we got to Mont St Michel (mind you, so did we, but we’d walked 700 steps the day before, and probably ¼ of Paris!). Mont St Michel was apparently built as a result of 3 visions a Monk received from the Archangel Michel (Michael) (didn’t believe the first 2, thought it could’ve been the devil). It’s impressive, built on solid rock, surrounded by water at high tide, sand on low tide, near the natural Normandy/ Britannia border. We were informed the tide goes out 10 miles as the tides turn, but when we were there the water was so far out we couldn’t see it. Pity, there were some tourists in the middle of the sandy bit that would’ve been funny to watch…

You could see that the chapel was a very early built one. It had none of the intricate architecture of others we had seen, but it was very impressive just the same. It was built in stages since about 400ad and is a mix of both roman and gothic architecture (we now know the difference).

Once finished, we went on to Caen for tea. This place had a museum dedicated to the people who fought in world war 2, as the Normandy landing beaches were not far away (shame we couldn’t see them, but there is only so much you can see in a day). The museum had all sorts of items in it, even an actual typhoon fighter from the war. The meal was very nice, even if the vegetables did taste a bit different. From there, it was back on to the bus and a 2.5hr trip back to Paris.

---