Le Mont Saint-Michel—day deux

(Nighttime pictures of the Mont were added after posting yesterday. They are at the bottom of yesterday’s blog and are beautiful)

We’ve had a nice sleep on the Mont and then all of a sudden people in the hotel started making all kinds of racket, waking up in the morning. We can hear people showering, closing doors (more like slamming doors), and talking. The place where we stayed seemed like it was built in the 16th century. The hardware was all very old and noisy and there didn’t seem to be much insulation between walls. It only added to the noise level.

It still seemed dark outside. Maridee says, “Is there a free buffet or something? What in the world is everyone doing this early in the morning?” We found our clock and turned on a light to check the time—7:30. Well, OK, I guess that’s not so early! But I can guarantee you that there is not a lot to do on the Mont at 8am! However, we did know that there was supposed to be another high tide at 8am, and so we wanted to go back out and see it in daylight. It was absolutely incredible! Water was everywhere--right up to the front door of the castle--amazing! The parking lots on both sides of the roadway are covered.

Check out time is at 11am and our bus isn’t until 4:45 and we don’t want to carry our luggage up and down all of these steps. So we got up and got ready and headed out the door (in search of that free buffet!) It’s hard to even find breakfast that early in the morning. We are the first customers at a creperie. At least they have the crepe cooker plugged in and hot! They were delicious—a ham and cheese crepe with an over-easy egg cooked right in the middle of it, and a banana with chocolate crepe—yummmmmy!


Our goal is to go to the abbey first thing. It’s now getting close to 10am and the tourists are starting to pile in. So we headed straight for the abbey—straight up that is. You can’t imagine how many steps there are. If you have seen the pictures of the Mont, the abbey is on the very top! The steps are pretty much set up like Disneyland lines. Every time you turn a corner, there is another 100 feet of steps—straight up. These are big steps. Of course everything is made out of stone, so these big granite stair steps just go straight up. I would say each step is about 10 inches high and you look up the stairs and they seem to go right into the sky and into heaven. Those pilgrims who came had to have been very devoted. To walk all the way from their homes and then climb and climb and climb…. But once you get to the top you see what brought them here and why it is such a special place. That’s probably also the reason why the Mont has never been captured by invaders!

So, up we go, and up and up and up. Every time we come to a corner, more stairs. Eventually we reach the top (we even paid 16 euros for this abuse!). We have taken our time—well sort of, but at the top, we are wasted, and so we sit for awhile and admire the views. There is a small display inside one of the rooms of the Abbey that shows its different construction phases in each of the different centuries and I snap some pictures. Uh-oh, my camera is giving me the “red signal” meaning—your batteries are just about gone! Oh crap! My extra batteries are in my backpack down at the hotel!

I let Maridee rest at the top so she won’t be grumpy and I headed back down the stairs knowing that I will have to climb them all over again. But it was worth it! By now, the tide had started to go out, and as soon as the parking lots were exposed, these trucks with high pressure water nozzles were clearing away the mud.


We toured the Abbey and then headed down those stairs thinking we were just about the luckiest people alive to have seen this place in spite of all the climbing. There are really no words to describe the place and we know that we are certainly not doing it justice.

Maridee wanted to do a little shopping (you should have seen her descend down the stairs, much quicker this time) so I just camped out overlooking the area and rested my tired and weary thighs.


Finally we decided that we had seen enough and Maridee’s legs felt like they had turned to wood so we decided to leave earlier than 4:45. The bus came at 3:15 but the driver didn’t want to let us on (we had already been told that it would be no problem by our hotel concierge). We patiently let everyone else get on the bus then Maridee approached the driver again and he said “OK” this time.

We arrived at the train station in Rennes in time to catch the 5:05 train to Paris (Maridee felt like she was on the Amazing Race, running here and there, changing tickets, etc…)
We will arrive in Paris almost 2 hours earlier than scheduled, but felt that we had a wonderful 2 days in the Mont.

Back in Paris, part of the rat race. The spell is broken, we have turned back into pumpkins! Print this post