Our final excursion out of Paris was to be to one of the most dramatic sites – and sights -- in Europe: Mont St-Michel, situated almost due west of Paris on the Atlantic coast. It sits atop a huge chunk of granite out in a tidal basin, and is visible from a long way off. This is taken through the bus window.
We visited here with our Stanford group back in 1966, ate snails for the first time, got potted on cheap wine, and partied on the sands, daring the tides to come in and drown us. We virtually had the Mont to ourselves back then, and it was not only a thrilling sight, but the village was quaint and not terribly touristy. Well, times change.
There’s no direct train service from Paris (or anywhere, for that matter). We would have had to travel 2 hours by train to Rennes, then hope that a bus would be available to take us another 70 kilometers to the Mont. We didn’t want to chance bad, or no, connections, so opted to take a tour bus, even though the full drive by bus would be about 9 hours round trip, not counting the time at the Mont (13 hours in all). The internet sources for such tours all required that you be able to print out a voucher to present to the tour operator. We didn’t have that capability, so I looked for a tour that had an actual office address in Paris.
As an aside, if I were going to again go to Europe for some time, I’d try to take some really compact portable printer with me. Most attractions sell tickets online, but you have to be able to print them out. We could have saved many cumulative hours that we stood in lines to buy tickets for the museums, Eiffel Tower, and the like. They all had lines (virtually empty) for visitors who already had tickets.
Anyway, we found a local tour place -- France Tourisme (which probably was the actual operator for many of the online sources). It boasted lunch with a view on the Mont, guided tour in English and other languages, and priority access. Sounded good. It wasn’t. [Roll ominous music.] We had to opt for a Sunday tour, as Saturday was booked, Monday they were closed, and Tuesday was the day before our departure. Still, that was OK by us. What we didn’t know then was that this was to be a four-day weekend, since Tuesday was a holiday.
Our day didn’t start out well. We had to be at the tour office at 7:00 a.m. (sharp! they said) and the bus would depart promptly at 7:15. Sunrise, by the way, would not be until 8:10. We got up at 5:30 to shower and grab a quick bite, then hustled down to the Metro, hoping it ran frequently at that hour. We had to wait about 10 minutes, not bad. The plan was to take our line 12 down to the Concorde station (8 stops away), then transfer to the #1 line for three stops to the Rivoli station, near the tour office. The best laid plans . . . Our train stopped four stations into our trip, and everyone had to exit and go topside. They were repairing the tracks! The friendly Metro people would provide a bus to take us to the next open station. Auugghhh! We’d been through that once before. It takes forever to get it organized and going. We’d never make it. As we climbed out onto the street, we ran smack into a brawl going on right at the exit involving half a dozen people, all screaming, shoving, pulling hair. The police were just arriving, so we quickly scooted away from the melee. We didn’t want to get caught up in a general dragnet. So, there we are, deserted streets, no bus in sight, way too far to walk, and Loni is not feeling well and needs a loo. I went out and stood in the middle of the street, looking for a cab, waived at anything moving (cabs here turn their roof lights on when they have a passenger, not when they’re free – go figure). After five minutes (seemed a LOT longer), a car stopped at my arm-waggling, and a roof light came on – yes! We piled in, I shoved the tour brochure with the address under his nose, and we were off. Made it right at 7:00, only to find a lot of people milling about. At check-in, she said they’d be a little late departing. Loni asked for a bathroom. Sorry, don’t have one. There’s a café open about two blocks away. Too far. Next door there was a café, not open, but a guy was sweeping the floor. Beg beg beg. Slap down some coin. He shrugs and nods her in. Saved. At 7:30 they called to load the bus, and about two dozen of us boarded. Then the fun began. A Spanish family (elderly father, adult son and his wife) started getting into it with the tour guide. Seems they had booked a different tour, not this one, according to the tour company. The Spaniards denied it, said this is what they booked. A big row ensues, with lots of hand gestures on the part of the old guy that even I could interpret. The tour people wanted them to get off the bus, and they refused. The son gets off to negotiate, but the old man stays put, verbally abusing the guide at the top of his lungs. This goes on for nearly half an hour before the son gets back on, the guide sits down, the driver climbs in, and we leave. Nothing more is said, but we’re way behind schedule.
On the way out, we got a view of the Eiffel Tower all lit up in the pre-dawn darkness.
After all the excitement, most of the bus settled in for a few winks as we made our way into the countryside. We did get treated to a bit of Fall color, but the good stuff was probably a couple of weeks away.
We made one pit stop about halfway there, and we tanked up on raisin snails (danish, not gastropods) and orange juice. We thought we’d be getting some commentary from the guide as we rolled along, but not one peep in nearly four hours. We didn’t have a clue what we were passing through. He didn’t come to life until we had the Mont in our sights off in the distance, and his remarks were limited, vague, and even wrong. Ah, well. It’s the visuals, not the story.
See that line of little white things on the horizon to the left. Well, that turned out to be the line of cars trying to get to the parking area. Priority access? Hah. Not for anything on wheels. I think this must have been what Woodstock looked like. Note the bird-streaked windshield. That’s how we started the trip. I’ve never seen a filthier windshield on a bus.
We finally crawled into the bus parking area. At least it was closer to the Mont than the general parking for the cars and RV’s. I think half of France must have decided to come here today.
Back in the day, the causeway itself used to go completely under water when the tide came in, making the Mont an island. Visitors had to time their visits for low tide times, and get their vehicles out before the tide came in. In the shot above, all the cars to the left, and the buses on the right, still would have to leave before high tide. Only the center corridor remains above water. Fortunately, high tides this day were at 8am and 8pm, so the water was largely receded by the time we got there, and no one had to worry all afternoon.
Now, the Mont is really a crowded place. There’s only one street that winds its way up to the abbey, and it’s really narrow. Imagine all the people in all the cars and buses that you saw in the picture above. Now, imagine all of them trying to get to the abbey up this “road.”
Yup, that’s it. The only way up. Can you spell Z O O ? By the time we got there, we were way late for our lunch reservations and, as you can imagine, the restaurant did not hold them with all these folks clamoring for tables. It was 12:30, and the guide split us up, some into one restaurant, and the rest of us in another. That table with a view? HAH! We waited while the guide pleaded for any seating at all. We got crammed into a foursome right by the stairwell with a view of nothing but other tables. The guide wished us well, said to take the left staircase when we went up to the abbey, and disappeared. That was the extent of the guided tour. He guided us to the restaurant. We then experienced the worst meal of the trip, if not the decade. The appetizer was three slabs of cold, heavy cheese. I could only choke one of them down. The main course was an omelet. Well, that’s what they called it. A thin sheet of fried egg (browned completely), folded over some foamy stuff. Tasteless. Dry. Bordering on the inedible. All this took quite some time to get to the table, as the place was absolutely jammed with tour groups (most of whose plates looked more appetizing than ours). This was so bad, and we were running out of time to see the abbey (we had to be back at the bus at 3:15), that we left without even seeing the dessert. Whatever it was, I don’t think we missed much. The only saving grace was that we shared our table with a young couple from Singapore who were in France for a year for his business assignment. They were delightful and we could converse in English for the most part.
Having escaped the Terrasses Poulard (never darken their doorstep) restaurant, we started up the hill, moving in lockstep with the masses. It was useless to try to push through. Once we got to the abbey, we looked for the “left staircase” the guide had mentioned. There wasn’t any, but we walked up the left side of the single steps, much to the consternation of the legions who were waiting in line on the right. That line snaked way, way out of this picture.
Turns out, the guide was right. If you hold a ticket indicating you are part of a “guided” tour, you get to enter via the “tour” line, which is on the left. Of course, there’s not a single sign that explains this, so a lot of dirty looks are exchanged as we “crashed” up the stairs to the head of the line, unsure we were doing the right thing until we got to the top and only then saw a small sign inviting tours to enter. Once in, the abbey is as impressive today as it was then. More so, perhaps, as we saw areas that we definitely did not view when we were here before.
The history of the Mont dates back to 708, when Aubert, Bishop of Avranches, built a sanctuary in honor of the Archangel, Michel. The mount soon became a major focus of pilgrimage (tourists, even then). In the 900’s, Benedictines settled in the abbey while the village grew up below its walls. It was an impregnable stronghold during the Hundred Years War, its fortifications resisting all English assaults. AS a result, the Mont became a symbol of national identity.
The place is full of interesting architecture, having been built over the centuries by piling one structure on top of earlier ones. The abbey (interior, center above; exterior, above right and left) stands on crypts that create a platform designed to take the weight of the church. The bottommost crypt has massive pillars to support the upper levels. It’s called the Crypt des Gros Pillers. The women in the left photo below are standing in front of one of the more unusual features, a giant wheel.
The wheel was used as a huge pulley to haul up materials and provisions to feed the incarcerated after the abbey was turned into a prison during the Revolution, and continuing until the 1860’s. There is a giant stone trough that angles down the slope from the base of the wheel to the town below which acted as the slide.
There is a columned, interior courtyard called the Cloister, which provided communication between the various buildings, and acted as a place of prayer and meditation. It sits atop a building known as the Merveille, built at the beginning of the 13th century, and gives access to the refectory, kitchen, dormitory, and various stairways. Below, top right, is the refectory, where the monks took their meals in silence while one of them gave readings from a pulpit on the south wall. The floor is in the nave of the church.
The interior is a real maze of passageways, circular stairways, and rooms of all sizes and shapes on many levels. The arched hall below left is the Knights’ Hall, built to hold up the cloister, it was the work and study room of the monks. There is a specific route to follow (a handout is given at the start), and woe betide he that deviates, because it is easy to get lost, and you either go forward or retrace your steps, as there are not alternative routes to egress. As a result, all of the visitors follow the same path. This isn’t a problem until (a) you look at your watch and realize it’s 3:00 and you’re still in the bowels of the abbey, high atop the Mont, and (b) you’re behind a huge tour of Chinese tourists who are all trying to funnel into the one-person-at-a-slow-time circular stairway that is the only way out (below, top right). We, ah, rather impolitely shoehorned ourselves into the middle of their group and squoze ahead.
Once we got out, we weren’t out of the woods. We had to navigate from the exit at the rear back around to the front so that we could find the sole stairway down into the village. Wandering around outside was just as interesting as inside.
We found our way back to the West Terrace, where you have a panoramic view over the bay, from the west in Brittany, to the cliffs of Normandy to the east. The picture below only takes in the Normandy coast on the right, with the isle of Tombelaine sitting out there. There are lots of signs posted in the parking lots warning visitors to NOT go out on the sands as there is quicksand and, when the tides are turning, that the speed of the incoming tide can outpace a running horse. People have drowned and been swallowed up. I guess nothing changes. We ignored the same warnings back in the day, and those little dots you see down there are folks doing the same today.
Being the anal types we are, we hustled as much as we could, given the unyielding masses, back down to the bus. We needn’t have bothered. Lots of folks were late, including the worst offenders, the nice young couple with whom we had lunch. No problem, as we were in no hurry to leave this gorgeous spot.
We didn’t tip the guide.
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