Mont St. Michel

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We are heading to Mont. St. Michel at the edge of the Normandy region today, and I woke up feeling like my fever had gone down a bit but the pressure in my head was like someone was in there banging on the inside to get out....UGH. We had a small breakfast before hitting the road to the Mont (3.5 hours). I slept most of the way, but we did make a stop at one of the many rest stops that they have on their highways. They are quite possibly the nicest we have ever experienced. Self cleaning and well kept. The overall landscape is heavily farmland. It's pretty amazing actually how many farms there are.Mont St. Michel actually has history dating back to 460 AD. and seeing it in the distance as we approached was really exciting. It is so much bigger that you think out there all by itself. The parking lots are pretty far away and you take a bus up to the bottom. It's pretty funny that cars are not even allowed to get close to it. They gate off the area entirely and you can walk to it from parking, 30min walking time. It was low tide when we arrived, so no water around at all.The thing about Mont St. Michel is that it is all uphill & stairs. Being sick the night before and really not eating much of anything (but that gross lunch) left me with zero strength, so the Mont was a toughie for me. We checked into our room and headed out to start the slow (because of me) climb to the abbey. We made it to the top, and the abbey was so much larger than we thought and very nice. The views from up there are very cool as well.

We made our way back down through all of the souveignier shops, which in places like this sell all of the same things, and then realized we had seen everything. We looked at our watches and realized it was a little less than 3 hours total to see the island. If we could redo the experience, we would certainly just have had it been a day stop, but we had booked a hotel so what to do? Sleep! Yes, I benefited from an extra nap before we went to dinner that was included with the hotel. This was another disappointing meal. We ordered from a fixed menu and both chose the lobster bisque as a starter because we were cold. It had scallops in it??? and I just didn't like it. Entrees are not even worth typing about honestly....bleh. The best part was dessert which was sorbet for Matt & a crepe for me.We walked outside of the island area to discover it was now high tide. They have a little walking bridge that comes down from the main road at the base, and at the very end where you step onto the Mont they had 2 planks because apparently the water had been higher than the edge of the bridge earlier that evening. We wanted to walk down the road and take some nighttime pics, and did get a few but whew, the wind was blowing hard and it had to be in the mid-thirties, so we abandoned that plan. I had full intention of going back to the room and catching up on travel blogs, but after hiking up all of the stairs again, I sat down on the bed to get started and fell asleep sitting up. Matt said it was the funniest thing....guess this girl needs some more Zzzz still!

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