There are four bank holidays in France during the month of May. While this does little for productivity, it gives us ample opportunity to discover more of the country. Last week, Thomas and I decided to take advantage of the five day weekend to visit Mont Saint Michel in Normandy.
Mont Saint Michel is an abbey built on a small rocky island a kilometer from the coast. Legend has it that the Archangel Michael told the bishop of a nearby city to build a church at this location. After the revolution, the abbey was closed and converted to prison. It has since been converted back into an abbey.
The island boasts 44 inhabitants but 3.5 million yearly visitors. Being only 247 acres in size, the island gets quite crowded during the high season. The narrow passage ways were congested with tourists last week, but we navigated through the maze of steep staircases up to the abbey rather than up the main narrow road. We passed a few people along this route, but it was not nearly the mobs of tourists we encountered on our way down from the abbey.
That said, while there are some hotels on the island, maneuvering through these streets with your luggage doesn't sound like a good way to start a vacation. We opted to stay in a bed and breakfast in Plouer Sur Rance, a small town (three restaurants small) that was an easy thirty minute drive to Mont Saint Michel and a 20 minute drive to Dinan - a quaint medieval with restaurants and a historic quarter to explore.
The bed and breakfast was run by a charming British couple who moved to Brittany twenty years ago after closing down their shop in Paris. They were the best part of the bed and breakfast. Each morning and afternoon, while the beagles enjoyed their expansive garden, Rosemary would chat with us. We found out wonderful details about the bed and breakfast -- The old barn used to be their brocante (antiques) shop; they have a small apiary in the backyard that produced the honey we had for breakfast; they have two pet tortoises that live in the backyard; the neighbor who owned the chateau behind the house was someone implicated in the Bernie Madoff scandal. For me, part of the joy of travelling is encountering people who have taken a different path in life and hearing about their experiences.
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| Line to enter the abbey. We were at the half way mark. |
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| The abbey at the top of Mont Saint Michel. |
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| Cloister. |
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| Archangel Michel burning a hole in the bishops skull to convince him to build the abbey on Mont Saint Michel. |
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| The sled and chains used to deliver heavy loads to the abbey. |
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| Prisoners inside would turn the wheel to lower or pull the sled. |
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| Visitors walking in the bay to visit Mont Saint Michel. |
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| The French Scouts after walking the bay. |
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| Trying to make our way out of Mont Saint Michel. |
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| The old barn at our bed and breakfast. |
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| one of the many animals on the property. |
